Quite Peculiar
by Julia456
Summary: Just some ficlets and drabbles and what have you.
1. the milky way tonight

**Note: **Ficlets/drabbles/whatever #1 through 81 were written before Goliath came out and are therefore spoiler-free for that book.

They are also now way,_ way_ out of canon, but watch me not care. ;)

This first one takes place… uh… somewhere around the end of Leviathan. I haven't decided if it's right after chapter thirty-nine, or later. Anyway. Title and original inspiration from "Under the Milky Way" by The Church.

.

.

.

_And it's something quite peculiar  
Something shimmering and white  
Leads you here despite your destination  
Under the Milky Way tonight_

.

.

.

The stars are huge and bright, filling the sky. There are more stars visible here, floating high over the eastern coast of Italy, than Alek has ever seen.

Now if only he wasn't standing on the spine of a lighter-than-air creature, with only a rope and some fabricated leather between himself and a very long fall, fleeing from his homeland.

"It does look like spilled milk," he says, putting his mind on the stars. The galactic center bisects the darkness in a fairy-tale cloud. "I suppose."

Dylan cranes his head back, turning to and fro carelessly to better take in the whole glittering swath. "It's dead romantic, isn't it?" the other boy says, then coughs and quickly tacks on, "Too bad there aren't any girls on board."

"Aside from Dr. Barlow," Alek points out. Who they are avoiding, which is why they're up here on the spine during the cold dark of first watch.

"She doesn't count," Dylan says, nose wrinkling. "She's a boffin! I meant a _girl_… Never mind."

Alek gives him a curious glance. The other airmen are full of boasts, brags, and wistful plans regarding their girls back home – but he hasn't heard Dylan say anything on the subject. "Do you have a girl at home?"

Dylan looks taken aback, then offers a quick grin. "Oh, aye. Hordes of lassies lining up at my door every morning. Have to take a stick with me everywhere, to drive them all off."

Alek is shaking his head by the end of that nonsense, because he knows his friend is joking. And indeed, Dylan adds, "I'm too skinny and half barking mad for flying. Who would want me?"

He seems amused, not concerned.

"You'll be a war hero after this," Alek says, not saying _If we survive the war_, because there's no need to invite disaster.

"So will you," Dylan points out, but Alek dismisses it. So far he's run away from his home, abandoned his countrymen, and allied himself with the British Empire. Next he plans to slip away and hide until the smoke clears. There's not much heroism on offer there, from the perspective of his people.

Dylan lowers his voice. "Never mind a bloody _emperor_."

"Only if Volger's right." Which the count usually is. An idea occurs to Alek for the first time, and he quickly turns to face Dylan, forgetting the perilous drop: "I could give you a position in my court."

Dylan blinks, taken aback all over again. "An ungodly Darwinist like me? Wouldn't be very popular with your Clanker subjects, would I?"

Alek hasn't considered that. "Oh. I could always tell them that you were my prisoner."

"Not much of a position," Dylan says, indignant. "That's Clanker loyalty for you!"

"It seems to work well for you ungodly Darwinists," Alek says, dry and perfectly on target.

Dylan laughs. "Right," he says, and lapses into silence. They stand and shiver in the cutting night wind, the stars doing nothing to warm them. It's warm in the gondola, warm in the _Leviathan_'s innards, but it's also full of Dr. Barlow and more work.

Then Dylan clears his throat and asks, awkwardly, "So, do you have one, then? A girl. Back home."

"No," Alek says. He thinks of all the duchesses, archduchesses, minor princesses, their mothers snubbing his while prodding their daughters forward. He is hugely relieved to be free of _that_, at least. Somehow he could never quite imagine – or want to imagine – himself with any of those pretty, simpering young women.

But he can't say that to Dylan, who's not likely to feel pity for a prince besieged by eager princesses. Instead he admits, "I was always more interested in military history, anyway."

"Good," Dylan says, and when Alek gives him what must be a strange look indeed, his friend colors and explains, "No time for love with a war on."

That's true enough. Alek is preparing to say so when the other midshipman, Newkirk, appears.

"Oi!" the other boy says by way of greeting, looking none too happy as he picks his way over the ratlines. "What're you doing up here, Mr. Sharp, er, Alek?"

"Teaching him some astronomy," Dylan says, jerking a thumb in Alek's direction. Clever and quick as always. "Poor Clanker sots – can't tell Lepus from Lupus. Dead tragic, really."

Alek tries simultaneously to look ignorant and not grin. He's terrible with constellations, yes, but his Latin is perfectly good; he knows the difference between a rabbit and a wolf.

"Well, you're both wanted by Dr. Barlow," Newkirk says, and when neither Alek nor Dylan make a move, adds, "_Directly_."

"It was worth a try," Alek says to Dylan, conceding defeat.

"Aye," Dylan says, voice sounding a bit odd. He's gone red again, and he's looking at the stars, not Alek. "It was worth it."


	2. one hand in my pocket

She puts the object into his hand without a word.

It's a simple gold pocket watch, his initials engraved on the front. Tucked inside, carefully trimmed to fit, is a picture of her in uniform.

"What's this for?" he asks.

She shrugs. Mischief dances around her eyes. "You might need it if you take up tennis."

He looks at the watch, then at her. Smiles, slow but sure. "I'll only leave it where it will cause the most scandal."

"Aye, you'd better. It was barking expensive," she says.

He grabs her hand, pulls her close, and kisses her.

She laughs.


	3. royal pains

_Note: My apologies for this one – but you say "WWI" and "royalty" and I think, "Romanovs!"_

_Tsar Nicholas & family were indeed in Spala, Poland, in the late summer of 1912, where Alexei suffered a near-fatal episode of hemophilia.

* * *

_

They're over the Aegean, nearly to Constantinople, and there doesn't seem to be enough time in the day to do everything that must be done. Alek marvels at that. Surely, at some point – with no one attempting to shoot them down, with all the ecosystems of the ship running smoothly – surely there must be a few idle minutes _some_where for the crew of the _Leviathan_.

But Dylan assures him that this is impossible. "There's always some sodding thing to do on this beastie," he says. Cheerfully.

Right now Dylan is walking Tazza and Alek is returning to his cabin (from whence he will go on to egg duty for Dr. Barlow) from his shift piloting the port engine. Despite their two conflicting duty schedules, there are always moments like this. It's a good feeling, that he has a friend who seeks him out.

"Do you know," Dylan says, "I've only just realized. If Dr. Barlow's so important, and those mysterious eggs of hers are so important, she'll go straight to the sultan. And since she'll likely have me dragging along behind her, doing all the work, I could meet him too!"

"Don't put a knife to his throat," Alek says.

Dylan scoffs and punches his arm, just hard enough to hurt. "Of course not! I'm not barking _mad_. But wouldn't that be brilliant? Me! Meeting a sultan!"

Alek looks at his friend. He feels a pang of jealousy despite himself; of course Dylan will meet Sultan Mehmed. The sultan will probably be impressed and offer him a job. "I suppose."

"Did you ever" – Dylan glances around, drops his voice conspiratorially - "meet him?"

"No," Alek says. Then, prompted by that selfish pang, he adds, "I met the czar once."

Dylan stops in his tracks. "Really?" he demands.

It's warm inside the _Leviathan_, heated as it is by both the Mediterranean sun and its own internal workings. Alek takes the pilot's goggles and hat off of his head and undoes the top few buttons on his leather jacket. "My parents and I visited him when he was on vacation in Poland, with his family."

There's a long moment of silence from Dylan, and then he breaks into an enormous eager grin. "Blisters! What was it like? What was _he_ like?"

Alek thinks. He remembers meeting Nicholas, watching the man talk with his father. "Quiet," he says finally. "Tired. He wasn't what I expected. None of them were."

Dylan looks at him in blank astonishment. "_Them_?"

Instead of saying, _The czaritsa, czarevich, and the four grand duchesses_, which might sound suspicious, he says, "His wife, son, and daughters."

If it's possible, Dylan's eyes grow wider. "You met them _all?_"

"Of course. It was a family vacation," he says, and his friend shakes his head, disbelieving and impressed all at once.

He's secretly pleased that he's finally outdone Dylan. At the same time, it brings no real joy, because he himself did nothing to merit admiration. All he did was sit beside his mother on a very long and dull journey. Volger had come along, so he hadn't even gotten out of fencing lessons.

He feels guilty now for mentioning it in the first place.

"_Well?_" Dylan says, walking again. "What were they all like, then?"

Alek thinks of what he could say in answer. The czaritsa is high-strung and fluttery, prone to nerves, but she was gracious to Mother, which earned her Alek's approval. The girls… Two are older, and beautiful, and ignored him. The other two are closer to his age, and hung around the czarevich's room.

Maria wasn't too bad; she spent most of Alek's visit giggling over every soldier she saw. But Anastasia – what a holy little terror _she_ was. Pinches, slaps, trip-ups, insults, and mocking imitations dogged him everywhere. When he complained to his mother, he was told not to be rude; when he complained to the czaritsa, she fluttered and did nothing. And Anastasia only intensified her attacks.

He sincerely hopes never to see her again.

"I don't really know what to tell you," he says now, shrugging. "I spent most of the time playing toy soldiers with the czarevich."

Dylan says something, but Alek doesn't hear it. He's been struck by the truth of that visit in the late summer of 1912, after his father and Volger returned from their own wanderings.

It hadn't been a political nicety. It hadn't been, as Alek had vaguely assumed, a family trip to appease Mother. No: Father had gone to tell the czar, who had tried in vain to help sort out Alek's inheritance, about the pope's dispensation.

And Father had brought along Alek so that the future Emperor of Austria-Hungary could meet the future Emperor of Russia.

Together he and the younger boy will rule half of Europe and most of Asia.

Alek played toy soldiers with him. Had been privately incredulous about his poor behavior. Had wondered, again vaguely, why Father had asked him so many questions about how he got on with the czarevich.

Alek and Alexei. _My God_, he thinks, distantly, _they'll need to use our full titles just to keep from confusion._

He comes back to himself with a painful jolt; Dylan has punched his arm again, in precisely the same spot as before. "Don't nod off in the middle of the barking story!" his friend exclaims fiercely.

"Sorry," he says, rubbing at his arm despite himself. Dylan knows how to punch. "But as I said, there isn't much more than that. I can tell you Alexei would join the Russian Navy in a moment if he was allowed. He lives in that sailor uniform."

Dylan wrinkles his nose. "Who wants to join the _navy _when they can have the air service?"

They reach the cabin Alek shares with Volger, who isn't in. Probably the count is off spying on the captain. "Or the army," Alek says, and is amused when Dylan snorts in disgust.

But there's something to be said for solid ground beneath one's feet. This being aloft makes him dizzy when he think about it too long, for all that he spends hours at the engines.

He strips off his heavy, wind-resistant piloting togs and stows them – neatly because otherwise there will be no end of criticism from Volger – and while he does Tazza noses about and Dylan shares scuttlebutt regarding Constantinople.

Alek listens with one ear. He's thinking about the four Imperial Grand Duchesses.

In order to stabilize the Continent – whatever's left after the war – and assuming he's around to take power – not a certain thing either – he may have to marry one of the czar's daughters. Or at the very least, court them. That would be nice; political goals achieved without actually finding himself related to the erratic House of Romanov.

Perhaps he can even do so entirely by mail and diplomatic envoys. Girls like love letters, don't they?

Or… perhaps he won't have to do any of that at all. Perhaps he can let His Serene Highness, Prince Aleksandar, fade into the murky depths of war and history, and simply be Alek, who is a crack Stormwalker pilot and friends with a half-mad Scot.

He knows that it's impossible, but for a moment it sounds wonderful.

"I don't think they're very happy," he says, pausing in the doorway of his cabin, and Dylan stops talking.

"Who now? Oh, them." Dylan tugs on Tazza'a lead. "Aye, all those palaces and jewels – who wouldn't be miserable?"

Dylan's sarcasm is hard to ignore, but Alek does. He's silent for a long moment, thinking. "I don't think _I_ was very happy," he finally says, mostly to himself. He looks at Dylan. "I think I like this life better."

" 'Course you do," Dylan says, not surprised at all. "It's the British Air Service."

Alek is taken aback. Then he laughs.

"Of course," he agrees, and he and his friend go on.


	4. the best laid plans

**Note: **Deryn is incorrect about the precise legal definition of a certain word. (To answer her question – oh, yes, it can be.) But it's not as funny when it's accurate. :D

Thank you, thank you, _thank you_ to everyone who's reviewed!

**Edit: **The fabulous Irrel has made some absolutely wonderful, hilarious, amazing fanart for this story, for which I can never express enough gratitude and awe. The link's in my profile - read and then go look, _go look!_

.

.

.

Volger is not happy.

Nothing has gone according to his meticulously-laid plans since Prince Aleksandar's group arrived at the Swiss castle, but as all of that disruption has been due to the prince himself, Volger has lacked a suitable outlet for his frustration.

One can hardly, after all, grab the heir to the Imperial throne of Austria-Hungary and shake him until some sense rattles loose.

Although one occasionally wants to. Very, very badly.

Constantinople had been a poor second choice to their refuge in the Alps, but Volger had been willing to adjust; now, another madcap adventure later, even that option is gone, and they're back on the Darwinists' whale-ship, sailing off on still yet another _absolutely inappropriate_ expedition. The prince's fault, again.

…the prince who has recently developed the inexplicable habit of disappearing for considerable stretches of time. Volger does not like mysteries any more than he enjoys having his plans upset. Alek is not at hand, so Volger goes looking for him.

Shortly into his search of the _Leviathan_ he thinks to check the midshipmen's cabins. Midshipman Sharp is constantly in the thick of trouble and danger, and – if Switzerland and Constantinople are to be the standards one judges by – happily pulls Alek in alongside him as well.

Volger approaches the cabin and opens the door soundlessly, as is his habit, and thus he has no one to blame but himself.

"_Gott im Himmel_," he swears, taking a fractional step backwards.

The boys come apart, eyes wide in shock and horror, and in the half second before the inevitable protests begin, Volger considers the situation and its ramifications.

It's a surprise, yes. Not an apocalypse, however. Goodness knows Alek won't be the first monarch to prefer the company of men, and he certainly won't be the last. This is unfortunate, but can be managed.

"It's not what you think," Alek says. He says this despite mussed hair, a half-untucked shirt, a flushed face, and one hand still on Dylan's arm. Dylan, whose own clothes are in disorder and whose blue eyes have gone almost black, his pupils are dilated so widely.

Volger doesn't laugh. Instead, he closes the door (very firmly) behind him. And manages.

"I believe that King George frowns on this sort of behavior amongst his soldiers," he says to Dylan.

"It's not-" Alek begins again, only to be cut off by Dylan giving his arm a tug. They exchange a look that Volger can't quite decipher.

"Aye," the other boy says boldly, albeit in a slightly higher voice than normal, "but it's not buggery if one of us is a _girl_, is it?"

It could merely be a feint, but Volger knows it's the truth even as the words are still being spoken. A thousand details snap into perfect clarity, and he curses himself for not noticing.

He says nothing, reworking plans to accommodate this new twist. Alek rushes into the gap, finger-combing his hair back into order and admitting, "I found out in Constantinople."

The expression on the prince's face is familiar, but for the moment, Volger can't place it.

"I see," Volger says. He looks at the girl he mistook for a boy (that error is going to gnaw at him for the rest of his life) and waits for someone to remember their manners.

"It's Deryn," she says.

Volger sketches half a bow in the tiny cabin. He doesn't bother to hide the sardonic overtones to the gesture, or to his next words. "_Miss_ Sharp. I can only assume your plan was to explain your appearance, in nine months' time, as the result of gluttony and poor fitness?"

She draws back as if he's slapped her. Since her back was already to the cabin wall (being pressed there, as Volger entered, by a certain other party), she can't go far. "Not barking likely," she says hotly. "I'm not daft!"

"We weren't going to do _that_," Alek says, aghast where Deryn is indignant.

"No," Volger agrees. "You were going to shake hands and walk away just as I came in."

He has them there. Both children have the grace to look embarrassed, and Deryn self-consciously tugs down her shirttails, retucking them and nudging Alek, who hastily turns away to put his own belt and trousers to rights.

Volger is suddenly glad he walked in precisely when he did, and no later. There are things one does not want to discover about one's ward in quite that way – or any way.

"It's not a crime," Deryn says – but small and quiet now. Alek takes her hand, and Volger suddenly recognizes where he's seen that expression before: the Archduke used to look exactly like that when he talked about Sophie.

Volger sends up a prayer to be saved from the wayward hearts and stubborn minds of all Hapsburg princes.

"It isn't," Volger says, although he's fairly sure it is. "It's merely, as you would say, barking daft, for all of the obvious reasons and many more obscure ones. I _am_ disappointed in you, Aleksander. I had thought you possessed somewhat more intelligence than this."

The barb doesn't sting Alek, but rather Deryn, who bristles at the words until the prince squeezes her hand. "You're right," Alek says. "This was… ill-considered."

"_I_ thought it was a good idea," Deryn says, just barely audible. Alek tries not to smile; a flicker of one escapes, earning Volger's further displeasure. Alek hardly needs assistance with insubordination.

"Decidedly not, young lady," Volger says curtly. "Although I use the term loosely. I'd thank you to stop getting the prince into troublesome situations. It's becoming tedious, thinking up new explanations for your lunacy."

Alek asks, looking hopeful, "You're not going to tell anyone?"

Volger chooses to smile. It unsettles them, and that's the intended effect. "Not at this time," he says. "But I believe there will be no more unsupervised visits to one another's cabins. I'm sure that we can have the captain rearrange watch schedules to make such incidents impossible. In the meantime, Your Highness, I'll stand as chaperone."

Two unhappy faces greet that pronouncement.

Volger thinks of the Archduke and Sophie, and what it's like to be sixteen and in love, and, despite himself, calculates that he can allow a small charity.

"Beginning in five minutes," he adds, then bows correctly to them both and exits, securing the door behind him.

God in Heaven, indeed.


	5. prices to pay

Shift. Stockings. Garters.

Corset.

(She wants to be a boy again now.)

Then the ballgown. Silk rustles, billows, settles. Hundreds of buttons up the back.

Long white gloves. More buttons.

She sticks her tongue out at the mirror, just to make sure it's still her.

"Hold still, miss," the maid scolds.

Hair, makeup, jewelry. Sash and her state decorations. Slippers, reticule.

_Done._

She stands. Takes a few steps and feels like an earthbound airship: enormous, dragging, and awkward. Not a squick like _herself_.

But once Deryn emerges from her (borrowed) rooms, it's all worth it – the look on Alek's face.


	6. a matter of taste

Deryn is as heartily sick of watery coffee and rock-hard ship's biscuit as anyone – the only food the wise beasties of the _Leviathan_ won't touch – but she knows better than to cheer when Mr. Rigby shares the news that they're to be resupplied by the French navy.

"And," Newkirk adds later, somewhere around hauling aboard the millionth crate of foodstuffs, "I heard this lot's out of _Algiers_."

"Barking spiders," she swears, heaving with far less enthusiasm, if that's possible.

But only a fourth of the supplies have gone off in the North African heat, and there's quite a lot of bacteria in the _Leviathan_'s guts more than happy to dispose of that for them.

In the meantime, everyone onboard has their first real meal since crashing on that sodding glacier. Deryn eats with Newkirk and Alek during one of the dog watches, torn between shoveling her dinner into her mouth as fast as possible, and taking small wary bites. Food poisoning won't help her disguise at all.

"What is this?" Newkirk asks, poking at the thing in question.

Alek guesses: "A potato?"

Newkirk wrinkles his nose.

"Aye," Deryn agrees, although she's not sure to what. "Hasn't got anything on the tatties my mother makes."

Alek looks confused. Newkirk says, sly, "How is she at haggis?"

Deryn leans across the table and steals a piece of his food so she can throw it at him. "My aunt does all the haggis, I'll have you know."

Too late she remembers that her mother is supposedly her aunt, and vice versa. Well. She doubts Newkirk is taking notes.

Alek is still confused. He looks between the two of them like a spectator at a tennis match. "What are you talking about?"

"Haggis," Deryn and Newkirk say in unison. "It's a pudding," Deryn adds. "A sausage, like."

Newkirk shudders dramatically and drops his voice to a confidential tone. "It's the most disgusting – here, now, quit that, that's my dinner!" he suddenly exclaims, interrupting himself.

Undeterred, Deryn flicks a third bit of Newkirk's food at him. To Alek, she says, "You have to be a Scot – a _proper_ Scot – to enjoy it."

"What's there to enjoy?" Newkirk says, brushing at the food on his shoulder. He also turns to Alek. "It's sheep's pluck."

Now Alek looks positively mystified. "I'm sorry. My English isn't up to this."

"Heart, liver, and lungs," Deryn clarifies. "You chop it all up with oatmeal and spices and such, then cook it in the beastie's stomach."

Newkirk makes a rude noise. "See? Barking disgusting."

"Oh, sod off," she says, although she's enjoying this more than not. "Monkey Luddite - what do you know?"

Newkirk sits up straighter, offended. "I know enough to stay away from any meal with sheep's pluck as the main ingredient!"

Deryn turns to the third member of their party, hoping for reinforcement. "Alek, tell him he's full of clart."

Alek has been acting like a tennis spectator again, head swiveling between the two of them as they argue, but now he manages to look very superior. Is that taught to all Clankers, or just their princes? Something to ask later.

"You airmen choose to live," Alek says precisely, decidedly, "_inside a whale_."

Deryn looks at him, wondering where the point is.

Alek delivers it: "Food is food, but _that's_ disgusting."

It isn't a ringing declaration in favor of Deryn's viewpoint, but she chooses to count it as such. Alek's _her_ friend, after all.

"Ha!" she says, and steals Newkirk's potato so she can eat it.


	7. trapped on the wire

Note: This one's inspired by – and takes its title from – the song "Children's Crusade" by Sting, which of course is about World War I.

And - AU this time, from roundabout chapter thirty-six.

_._

_._

_The children of England would never be slaves  
They're trapped on the wire and dying in waves  
._

.

The soldier nudges the body's head with the toe of his boot, trying to turn it while avoiding the blood. The blood is long since frozen, and can't possibly stain his boots – but it's more a matter of superstition than practicality. His lieutenant crouches down to check the face against the photograph from the intelligence officers.

"It's not him," the lieutenant says, rising again. They move to the next body. The soldier looks down the row of the dead and grimaces. It's going to be a long evening, a longer night, and he's already half-frozen himself. He flexes his numb fingers around the lantern's handle; the gloves are doing nothing against the glacier's cold.

"Too old," the lieutenant judges. They go on.

Behind them, and entirely too close, the downed monstrosity makes a loud, peculiar sound – almost a bellow, almost a moan, almost a wail. The soldier feels it vibrate through his bones and crosses himself, spooked.

"Looks like they found the heart," the lieutenant says. "Thank God, that's one less of _those_."

"Yes sir," the soldier says. He's suddenly glad to be outside, even in the snow and ice, even conducting a long, fruitless search. Anywhere rather than inside that godless beast as it dies.

They pick up their pace. The soldier is only there to hold the lantern and move the bodies when necessary – heaven forbid a lieutenant get his hands dirty. He does his job and spends the rest of the time thinking about the war. Everyone at home talked about how glorious, how magnificent it would be. He's yet to see any glory. So far all he's seen is the belly of the _Herkules_ and a lot of dead men in the snow.

"This could be him," the lieutenant says. "Right height, age, coloring… Bring the light lower."

The soldier bends down as directed, splashing bright light across the dead boy's face. The lieutenant checks the photograph and squints. "I don't know," he says. "What do you think?"

The soldier thinks the body and the photograph look enough alike that they can plausibly claim it so, be done, and go get warm; but he also knows better than to give an officer an opinion.

He says, "I don't know, sir."

The lieutenant hmphs. "We'll keep looking."

They go down the entire long row of enemy dead with no luck. The lieutenant stands around and curses for several minutes, then orders the soldier back to the body that might be the right one.

On second glance, it doesn't really look like the boy in the photograph at all.

The lieutenant curses some more. The soldier does nothing; he's waiting for orders and wondering what he's likely to have for dinner, and when, and whether or not he'll be able to eat it.

"He has to be here," the lieutenant says, dropping his voice and rubbing at his face. He looks around, nervous. Maybe he thinks the intelligence officers are watching. (Not likely – they're all aboard the _Herkules_, the soldier knows, staying warm.) "He wasn't one of the prisoners."

"No sir," the soldier says promptly.

The prisoners were all executed. Orders of the kaiser, supposedly. The soldier is also glad he wasn't assigned to that detail. Damn depressing job, that, particularly when they got to the dog-creatures.

The lieutenant isn't enjoying this job much either. He rubs his face again. "He _has_ to be here."

"Yes sir," the soldier agrees.

The lieutenant takes a deep breath – and coughs at the cold. "Hell. This is him. I'll go announce it. Just – smash his face in a little, first."

The soldier doesn't move until the lieutenant slips him a pack of cigarettes and some money. Then he says, "Yes sir," steps forward, and brings the butt of his rifle down across the dead boy's face.


	8. prices to pay, part 2

She's glad for Alek's arm supporting her. Clings to it tightly.

His elegant jacket is getting wrinkled.

"You weren't this nervous about meeting _me_," he says, voice low.

"I wasn't wearing skirts a meter wide then, either."

He grins; her heart skips, and not from nerves.

The reception line moves forward. Names are called; dignitaries bow.

Deryn tries to remember her etiquette lessons, but panic squeezes it all out. She's about to meet the king. _Of England_. She took an oath to this man. 'Course, that was when she was a boy, but…

Alek leans close, whispers, "Just don't swear."


	9. details

"That's not right," Alek says, pointing at a detail on the sketchbook page. "It connects up here."

Deryn squints, then decides he knows better than she. "There?"

He nods, and she rubs out her mistake, then draws the line afresh. She loves and hates these Clanker engines. She loves them because they're so fiendishly difficult to draw – all their bits and gears fitting together so cleverly. And she hates them… well, for the same reason.

"How's that?" she says, angling the book so he can see it better.

"Perfect," he says, with honest admiration. "You're very good."

"Thanks," she says, with honest gratitude. She knows she's a fair hand (she's bragged about it often enough), but hearing him say it… She casts around for something to say that'll distract from the blush on her cheeks. Luckily, a memory leaps out at her, and she quickly rifles through the pages, searching for another drawing. "I did one of your walker, back on the glacier. D'you want to see it?"

"Of course," he says. He leans forward, eager, and she passes the sketchbook to him. He looks at the drawing of his poor lost walker for a long moment, carefully and critically.

She feels the need to say, "I was in a bit of a rush."

"No," he says, still staring at the sketch. His voice has a little hitch to it. "It's – I like it the way it is."

Boys. If she didn't know better, she might be inclined to think he's more brokenhearted over abandoning the Stormwalker than he is over the death of his parents.

Before she can ask for the book back, he flips forward a few pages, past all the studies of engine parts and such, and lands on – of course – the one sketch she didn't particularly want him to see.

He frowns. "Is this… is this your sister?"

She freezes. It's a self-portrait, only it's clearly Deryn, not Dylan: her hair is long, the way it used to be, and done up properly; and just for a lark, she drew herself wearing one of the fashion-plate dresses in the ladies' journals that her aunt always coos over. There's enough ruffles to drown in, and that hat looks like it might pounce on and devour an innocent passerby at any second.

She forces a smile – probably looks a mad fool – and says, recklessly, the first thing that comes to mind: "I thought it looked like me in a dress."

Alek grins at her, evidently taking her words as a jest. "It's not that bad! I think she looks… rather pretty, actually."

Deryn sees an idle sketch of a skinny girl in a dress that doesn't suit her, but her heart lifts and flutters and spins at the thought: _He thinks I'm pretty_.

She wants to ask, _Really? Would you step out with a girl like that, even if she's daft and dresses like a boy half the time? Your Highness, will you look at her twice when you're surrounded by princesses?_

She wants to say, _That's me, and I think I'd like to kiss you_.

But she can't.

She takes the sketchbook back and closes it so neither of them can see the picture anymore.

"_I_ never thought so," she says, trying her best to sound like Jaspert. It's true enough, though, and she has proof now to support her opinion; if she was pretty, she wouldn't make a very convincing boy, would she?

"Well, I suppose you wouldn't," Alek says, "her being your sister."

She blinks at him.

"I suppose not," she says. She looks at the sketchbook in her hands.

And wonders.


	10. fencing

Dr. Barlow complains about the delay, but nothing changes the captain's mind: they set down on a tiny Greek island before dusk. As Deryn hears it, Captain Hobbes has informed Dr. Barlow that he "would rather fly towards the heart of the Ottoman Empire when they can properly see our white flag" and "we will risk our lives just as well tomorrow morning."

Deryn heartily approves of the captain's decision, not least because it stymies the lady boffin something fierce.

Some of the airmen take the opportunity to disembark and stretch their legs on solid ground. Alek and his count go off toward the beach, carrying mysterious bundles and glowworm lanterns.

As the Clankers' unofficial minder, Deryn decides it's her duty to follow, so she invites herself along.

"A fencing lesson," Alek explains when she asks where he thinks he's going. He unwraps a corner of the bundle, revealing the hilt of a sword. "Sabers. There's no room on board," he adds.

She looks at him (and the count) askance; it's been a full day, and Alek has been every bit as busy as she. There's no sitting idle on a beastie flying into an enemy nation on the eve of war. "Aren't you barking _tired_?"

Alek lifts a shoulder in a shrug, and "He needs the practice," Count Volger says, as if the question is ludicrous.

This is one of those boy things, Deryn decides, that she simply can't understand because she wasn't born with a half-scrambled brain. Then again, maybe this is a Clanker thing; none of the airmen are mad enough to try for the beach.

The island is all rocks, with a village clinging to one end and, at the other, a wide, uneven sward of patchy grass where the locals usually graze their livestock (and where the _Leviathan_ is currently moored). Volger, Alek, and Deryn clamber down to the thin strip of beach below, tucked up between sea and crags. An August evening in Greece is warmer than a July day in London, and Deryn's worked up a sweat by the time she reaches the sand.

It's a bad time to be a girl pretending to be a boy. If she was really a boy, she thinks darkly, she'd have her shirt off already.

Volger and Alek must agree, because the first thing they do upon touching sand is strip to their shirts and roll up their sleeves to the elbow – any further undressing being offensive to imperial sensibilities, she supposes. Deryn finds a perch on a rock and tries to think boy thoughts instead of noticing the muscles in Alek's forearm as he grips his sword.

Luckily, once they begin practice, she's too amazed to be distracted. She's never seen anyone use a sword, and Alek and the count know how to use them well. It's like a sort of dance – all quick staccatos and stamps and flashes. The sand is rapidly churned up around them, and then, as she watches, the count forces Alek into the edge of the waves.

She cups her hands around her mouth and shouts encouragement – "Oi, Alek, toast his bum!" – and Alek looks at her, startled, and Volger knocks him off-balance and he falls into the seawater. It must be a steeper drop-off than it seems, because he goes all the way under and comes up sputtering.

Deryn laughs at the look on his face, then feels mortified that she's to blame for his dunking. "Sorry," she calls.

"It's all right," Alek calls back. He shakes his head, shedding water, and pushes his hair back with one hand. In this light, and wet as it is, his hair's normal red-brown color shows deep copper. "I'm not used to having, ah, a vocal audience."

Volger says something in Clanker-talk that sounds derisive – but then, the man sounds derisive when he sneezes, so who can tell, really?

Alek says something back, equally tart, and Volger raises an eyebrow. Deryn feels a squick of pride, seeing her friend give as good as he's getting.

The count says, "As you wish, Your Serene Highness," and then they raise their sabers and begin again.

This time Deryn stays silent while Volger offers a running commentary of Alek's mistakes. In English, so Deryn is sure to understand how badly Alek is failing.

But Volger doesn't realize that she's not paying attention: she's distracted again. Lost in the way Alek's shirt clings as he moves, the way his wet hair is drying into untidy swirls, the look of fierce concentration on his face – tempered now and then by the flicker of a predatory smile at the corner of his mouth – all of it lit by the warm red-orange of the fading sunset.

At least, she _hopes_ Volger doesn't realize. She's in a barking lot of trouble if he does.

She's in a barking lot of trouble anyway, judging from the way her skin is prickling all over and she has to keep swallowing against the dryness in her mouth.

She watches Alek and thinks, _I want you to look at me like that_.

The count wins again, but it's a closer victory this time. Deryn waits until she's sure they're done before she cheers, trying her best to mimic her brother Jaspert at rugby matches.

Alek looks startled again – blisters, has he really never had an audience cheering for him? – but quickly grins and gives a jokey sort of bow.

"Wonderful," Volger says, sheathing his sword and slowly, mockingly applauding. Each clap is as sharp as the man's tone and echoes off the rocks. "You can perform on the streets of Constantinople and earn our supper."

Alek stands there, breathing harder than normal and looking as if this sort of insult has lost most of its sting through age. "I'll consider that possibility," he says.

"Well, _I _think it was brilliant," Deryn says, hopping down from her rock. She takes care to sound like an indignant friend and not like a girl thrilled by the display. "If you _do_ go playing for your supper, Alek, you'll make a million."

"Thank you," he says. "I think."

"How long have you been -?" she asks, miming swishing a sword about.

"Since I was ten." He turns the saber in his hand, making the glowworms' light slide up and down the blade.

"And with five more years' practice," Volger says, derisively of course, "he may remember not to drop his point in _tierce_."

"Thank you, Count Volger," Alek says. He cuts Deryn a fast, sneaky glance, full of mischief, and adds, "You're dismissed."

A laugh pops out of her, and she claps her hands over her mouth before the count decides she needs skewering.

Volger ignores her, bows with a dry (and not entirely unamused), "So I am, Your Highness," and collects his discarded things before picking his way back up the rocks.

Deryn waits until she's completely certain that Volger's out of earshot, then says, "_That_ was a barking daft risk."

"Yes," Alek agrees. He's in a jolly mood for someone who just tweaked the nose of a man who might, without much fuss or bother, kill them all before breakfast. But perhaps that's the point.

"Seems effective, though," she says, looking at the spot where Volger disappeared.

Alek makes a noise that's neither a laugh nor a hum, but somehow manages to send heat skittering low through her belly. "If he expects me to be an emperor, he'll have to get used to taking orders. But I'll pay for that one in the next lesson."

His saber gleams softly in the lantern-light, like a bioluminescent lure some clever sea-beastie might use to swallow up other fishes. And God help her, she drifts closer.

"Let me see it," she says impulsively, holding out a hand for the saber. "If it's all right, I mean."

"Of course," he says, and puts the saber into her hand. It's heavy, but not as heavy as Deryn was expecting. Their fingers brush and it makes her breath catch.

Barking _wonderful_. She checks his face, hoping he hasn't noticed, and finds him looking back at her, very puzzled indeed.

"It's… it's heavy," she says. _Daft, daft, daft_. She gives the sword back and steps away quickly. Her skin is white-hot where they touched, and she has to make a conscious effort not to rub it against the leg of her trousers.

"If we weren't leaving the ship in Constantinople," he says, "I could have Volger give you lessons, too."

"No, thank you!" she exclaims, momentarily forgetting how much she would like to run her fingers through his untidy hair. "Not for all the tea in –"

But he's grinning. That spark of mischief is back in his eyes, and in the darkness, he looks like a pirate, not a prince.

_I want you to look at me like that_. Now he is, and she's struck dumb.

She should laugh. Should retaliate with a clever insult. But she can't.

If the saber is a lure, then she feels like a fish, pulled in and bitten clean in half – but no fish would want so badly to be bitten again. And again, and again.

She wants him to keep looking at her like that. She wants to step in closer and press her mouth to his, see what he tastes like with sea-salt on his skin, and she wants him to kiss her back and hold her close and take all the most shocking liberties, as her aunties would describe it.

She wants _him_.

_Alek_.

"Dylan?" he asks, frowning. "Are you all right?"

No. No, she is not, and the hopeless truth blows suddenly through her, colder than any wind aloft. Cold, hollow, and lonely.

Once again she's left wanting something she can't have. This time, however, she won't be solving the problem with a made-over airman's uniform and a dodgy haircut.

"What? Oh, aye – just tired. Busy day and all that." She forces a yawn, trying to pretend her heart isn't breaking into a million daft pieces. "Better get back to the _Leviathan_ before I fall down."

"Yes, that sounds like a good idea." He stifles a genuine yawn, slides the sword into its scabbard, and picks up his jacket, shaking out the sand. "And there's Constantinople tomorrow."

"Another barking disaster to look forward to," she agrees, fetching the lantern. It hurts to speak; it hurts to swallow; and damn him for still looking so handsome in the feeble light.

"It could be fun," he says, smiling at her. Cutting her in half again.

"Aye," she says without enthusiasm. Too wounded to pretend.

She waits until she's safe in her cabin, blanket over her head and all alone, to let the tears come.


	11. prices to pay, part 3

In Vienna they're old news; in London they're a scandal.

Deryn meets one shocked matron after the next. Receives sniffy acknowledgements, speculative looks – what sort of girl becomes an emperor's mistress?

But. "Good for you!" the American ambassador's wife confides, smiling.

Deryn blinks. "What?"

"Knowing what you want. Going after it." She winks at Deryn, nods toward Alek (dancing with a duchess twice his age). "_I_ would."

"Aye," Deryn says, watching him: handsome, graceful, _hers_. Thinks maybe she'll let him help her out of the dress tonight, instead of the maid. "Has its perks."

The ambassador's wife laughs.


	12. trapped on the wire, part 2

_Pawns in the game are not victims of chance_

_- from "Children's Crusade" by Sting_

.

.

.

There are footprints in the castle courtyard.

Not the tracks from the wrecked and half-stripped Stormwalker (and much good _that_ desperate attempt did the Darwinists) which they've been following back to their source. These footprints are newer than the tracks. Overlaying them.

Holtz spots them first, although Stipp is sure he would've, regardless; he's a good tracker, and the day is bright and clear.

They disembark from their scout walker and check their helmets, their weapons.

"What do you think?" he asks Holtz in a whisper.

Holtz shakes his head. "Blood," he says, equally low. He's right. There's a series of stains on the patchy snow in the courtyard. That means whoever made the footprints is injured, possibly seriously.

Stipp crouches beside the shuffled, shambled line of footprints. "How many?"

"Maybe two," Holtz says after a moment. "No more than three."

Stipp agrees. Suddenly he's very glad he did not, after all, tell his commanding officer that this was a damn stupid assignment – that contrary to the rumor filtering through the ranks, no one had leapt from the Darwinist monstrosity as it went down. He had thought scornfully, back at the _Herkules_, that no one would do such a crazy thing, even in a war, even with imprisonment and death waiting on the ground.

But there are footprints in the courtyard, and one of the castle doors is standing open by inches.

Rifles won't be much good inside the castle, so they draw their pistols. The grip feels clumsy in his hand, but he's not taking off his heavy gloves. The temperature's too low for that.

The _Herkules_ is already having trouble with its mechaniks. The faster, more agile single-rider scout walkers are all in various states of disrepair – frozen fuel lines, cracked pistons, impurities revealing themselves with brittle-metal fractures. Hence their slow and jolting trek in the two-seater, which is a tough old thing. Tougher than the glacier.

Altogether, the cold is merely an annoyance right now, but if they sit on this ice for another day, hunting runaway Darwinists, it's going to become a serious problem.

Holtz takes the lead and Stipp follows close behind. His heart is pounding, his eyes and ears straining, excitement and terror having a small war of their own within his chest. He's been a soldier for years, but it never gets easier.

Inside the castle everything is icy and silent. There's evidence of a recent fire, but when they check, the ashes are cold. That doesn't mean much. In this weather, at this altitude, a hearth can die as fast as a man.

A noise somewhere in the castle.

A scrape, a rustle, quickly hushed, exactly the sound a fugitive might make by accident.

The soldiers go absolutely still.

Stipp looks at Holtz, and he knows what the other man is thinking.

The castle is too big for only two men to search, and they don't know, after all, how many Darwinists survived the drop. Two, maybe three – maybe twenty more lying in wait for an ambush. They need to go outside again and fire off a signal flare.

Then a girl screams.

It's piercing and terrified: "_Hilfe! __Bitte! Bitte!_"

Holtz, who has a little daughter waiting at home, doesn't hesitate. He plunges ahead into the hallways of the castle as the shrieks become sobs and the pleading becomes a wail. Stipp curses and goes after him.

They track the mysterious sound down a flight of stairs. Stipp is wondering what a girl's doing here, and what's happened to her. Is she a prisoner of the Darwinists? Does she live here? Is she from a nearby town, stranded here by unknown circumstances? It doesn't make any sense, and his unease grows as they carefully close the distance to the room where the cries are coming from.

The door is open wide. Stipp puts a hand on Holtz's shoulder, silently urging caution, and Holtz nods once, impatiently, in acknowledgement. They enter the room in a burst, weapons ready.

The girl is huddled on the floor, wrapped in an old blanket stained with oil and grease. Light spills from one small window that's half-buried in snow, making the room dim but brighter than the hallway outside. Stipp can't see her beyond a glint of blonde hair and a pale face beneath the dirty cloth.

"Miss?" Holtz asks. "Are you all right?"

The girl looks up and the blanket slips backward a few inches. Stipp wonders: _Why is her hair cut so -_

Something hits him in the back. No pain; only impact. He staggers and turns, trying to bring his weapon up, but his hands aren't responding, and to his surprise, his legs are no longer holding him up either. He falls to the stone floor of the castle, still trying to understand what's happening. Or rather, trying to tell himself that what's happening, isn't.

No one wants to admit that they're about to die.

Holtz shouts. Almost simultaneously, there's a deafening bang. Stipp watches Holtz fall backwards, slowly, slowly, and slump to the floor. The front of his uniform blooms red.

The girl is standing now, a black pistol in her hand. She looks horrified, but then swallows and steps forward and aims the pistol at Holtz's head.

Stipp wants to say, _He has a daughter, the only reason you're able to do this is because he loves his daughter_, but the thought slips away before he can get it onto his tongue.

He does close his eyes, though, so he doesn't have to see it.

He hears the second bang. Forces his eyes open again. The room is filling with smoke and he should smell the gunpowder. All he can taste is blood.

Pain has entered his chest at last, great and terrible, like being crushed beneath one of the _Herkules'_ legs.

The girl says something in a language Stipp doesn't understand.

A boy with red-brown hair steps into view. He trades the girl a knife for the pistol and crouches in front of Stipp.

"I'm sorry," the boy says as Stipp's vision dims and tunnels. His German is very good, very cultured, and he sounds genuinely regretful. "But we need your walker."


	13. on the clock

Fingers skim. Her breath hitches.

"I have to report in ten minutes," she says. But his hands are moving; her back arches; and the idea of leaving is very unwelcome indeed.

"Fifteen minutes," he says. Pushes her against the cabin wall. She gasps a laugh – trust a Clanker to keep perfect time even during all this! He echoes it, unsteady. She loves that.

"Takes me five minutes to get to the spine," she says. Then kisses him so he can't say it only takes three minutes twenty.

Precision is a virtue, but they've got better things to do just now.


	14. shuffled

Note: Well, that iPod shuffle game looked like so much fun I thought I'd try it too. And it_ is_ fun!

So. The ninth drabble contains a reference to an infamous (and much-heckled) moment in _Jem and the Holograms_ history. In the episode "Glitter & Gold"… oh, just look for it on YouTube. It's about 7 minutes in. My point is: I couldn't resist.

* * *

**1. "Cosmic Girl" by Jamiroquai**

For a moment he was silhouetted against the night sky, black on black, his fair hair a silvered flag in the moonlight, and Alek stared, swept up by a sudden burst of imagination… Because of course he was imagining it, he thought as Dylan's face was caught in the light of the bioluminescent lanterns once again.

Of course he was imagining it. There was no way, after all, that Dylan could be a girl.

.

.

**2. "Meet Me Halfway" by The Black Eyed Peas**

She's stopped at the Austrian border.

"Barking spiders!" she swears, taking her frustration out on the useless ticket in her hand. The war's over, she ought to be allowed into Austria… but no. For a moment she considers protesting: _I'm meeting the man who was almost your barking emperor! _

But she doesn't. Instead she marches herself to the telegraph office and dictates a note that manages to be very cordial despite her wrath at the border officials.

And two days later, she has the great satisfaction of being escorted right over the Austrian border by the man who could have been the emperor and is going to settle, instead, for being her husband.

Although that's quite a step up, if you ask her.

.

.

**3. "Serious" by Duran Duran**

"You make me feel like I'm on fire," he tells her, breathing hard, pressing closer. He's entirely serious, and very invested in the moment – which makes it all the more disconcerting when she bursts out laughing.

"What?" he demands, sitting back.

She just shakes her head, still laughing, and pulls him down again.

"I was serious," he says. His own mouth is twitching now; her good humor is always infectious.

"Aye," she says through her laughter. "Don't be."

.

.

**4. "White Wedding" by Billy Idol**

"Stop scowling, Jaspert," Deryn said. She twisted back and forth, admiring the swish of white fabric. First time in her life she was happy to be wearing a dress.

"Oh, what _should_ I be doing? Sitting out there with our mam and the aunties, smiling and pretending it's all so nice?"

"Aye," she said. "Or walk out of the kirk altogether. Your choice."

He glared at her for a moment longer, then threw up his hands. "God knows I can't stop you when you've got your mind set. Even if we all know it's a barking farce for you to be wearing -"

She cut him off with a sweet smile and a not-so-sweet, "Finish that sentence and I'll run you through with my fiancé's best saber."

.

.

**5. "Son Becomes Father" by The Hellecasters**

It should be the happiest day of his life. And it is, truly. He sits with his son cradled in his arms and is overwhelmed with joy and love.

But under all of that is the thought: _Father. Mother_.

They'll never see this. His son will never know them.

He brushes a kiss on the wrinkled red skin of his son's head and lets himself be overwhelmed by joy, and love… and grief.

.

.

**6. "Drive Slow" by Kanye West**

"Not so fast!" Alek says, alarmed.

"Blisters," Deryn swears. She overcorrects and nearly topples the runabout. Alek pushes her hands off the controls and takes over, spilling momentum and bringing them to a safe stop.

"Slowly," he says, trying to make his heartbeat calm down. "Always slowly until you know what you're doing."

She _hmphs_ and scowls at the incomprehensible Clanker controls. "It's easier when you're flying."

.

.

**7. "Anything You Can Do" from **_**Annie Get Your Gun**_

"You can fly an airbeast."

"You can pilot those barking Clanker machines."

"You can throw a punch or a knife."

"You can fight with…"

"A saber."

"Aye, that thing."

"And you can swear in four languages."

"You make a more convincing boy."

"I'd hope so!"

She surveys the wreck of their kitchen and concludes, "But neither of us can cook."

.

.

**8. "Carry On" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young**

One morning he wakes up and knows: His parents are gone, the old world is gone, and none of it is ever coming back.

He won't be emperor; there's not a place for emperors anymore. The war is going to clear away all of that and leave something new and different instead. New and different and full of potential.

A new world where it's not Clanker vs. Darwinist, but both working together – the way he and Deryn work together. A new world. A better world.

And he will get to help shape it – not because he was born to the right branch of the right house, but because he's been building the new world already.

He can't wait.

.

.

**9. "Deception" by Jem and the Holograms**

She tells him, finally. It seems an eternity as she waits for a response. The bewildered hurt and anger filling his eyes doesn't bode well.

She hopes he doesn't kick over the plant.

.

.

**10. "Thrown Down" by Fleetwood Mac**

"Hello," she says, too surprised to be ashamed or angry or bitter.

"Der- Miss Sharp," Alek says. Perfectly correct. His heart in his throat. "How are you this afternoon?"

She's angry now. "Just barking fine. How's your wife?"

"Annulled."

That gets her attention. My God, he thinks, she's still so beautiful, all these years later. What a fool he was. How hard he's made his life – needlessly hard – spending so much of it without her. Even a day apart was too long.

"I'm sorry to hear that," she says. Only someone who really knows her could tell she's lying through her teeth. And that gives him hope.

"I'm sorry, Deryn," he says, in a rush, not with a clever speech as he'd planned. "For everything, all my mistakes. Please forgive me. Please – can we start over?"

She looks at him. A flicker of a smile starts at the corner of her mouth.


	15. introductions

Note: That hellacious name is lifted from one of the archduke's actual sons. And Deryn's middle name is a shout-out to another *ahem* _daring_ airman from the UK. (Six thousand bonus points if you get that reference.)

.

.

"You know," he says one day, out of nowhere, "we were never properly introduced."

"We were never properly anything," she points out.

He grins at her. "We should be."

"Anything?"

"Introduced."

"Ah. Aye, all right, then," she says. She brushes off her hands and extends one. "Miss Deryn MacGregor Sharp, pleased to meet you," she says, with a prim little curtsy that's mostly ruined by the addition of, "And don't start on the MacGregor. It's my mam's family name."

"I would never," he says, perfectly serious. He takes her hand and bows over it. "Aleksandar Ferdinand Karl Franz Michael Hubert Anton Ignatius Joseph Maria von Hohenberg, at your service, Miss Sharp."

She bites her lip. Hard. The laughter bubbles up anyway.

He watches her, grinning again. "Suddenly MacGregor's not so bad, is it?"

"I'll never complain again," she says.


	16. trapped on the wire, part 3

Note: I have no idea if there was really a British consulate in Zurich in 1914 (there's one there now, if you're wondering), and I fretted over that for a good long while before I realized: they didn't really have giant flying whales back then, either.

So! A consulate. :)

_._

_._

_All of these young lives betrayed._

_- from "Children's Crusade" by Sting_

_._

_._

Anna is typing up a copy of the report when the boys arrive.

She's alone in the office of the consulate today; Marie is ill and at home. Anna has had nothing to do this morning beside catch up on her typing, and she's made good progress, but she's more than happy to pause.

One of the boys – young men, really - has red-brown hair, and the other (who's slightly taller) is blond. They're both wearing simple, plain clothes, the sort a farmer might have, and they are not as clean as they might be. These do not look like expatriate Brits. She hopes they aren't locals who are having some sort of trouble with expats; the consul hates those cases.

"Good morning," Anna says in Swiss German, smiling politely. She removes the paper from the typewriter and lays it aside, face down. It's a report from the embassy in Bern, a courtesy communication, informing the consul of what the Swiss military's expedition to the Aletsch Glacier had uncovered (the burnt remains of a British airship and crew, and the retreating backs of the Germans who'd killed them). Nothing _too_ confidential; rumors very close to the truth have been reported in all the newspapers. Still, one should try to be discreet. "May I help you?"

The shorter of the two surprises her by saying, in perfect English, "We need to speak with the consul immediately."

Anna blinks and keeps her smile. "I'm quite sorry," she says, switching to English herself, "but you'll have to make an appointment. The consul is very busy today."

The consul is reading in his office and has no meetings scheduled for the afternoon. The consul will probably go home at midday and then take his wife shopping.

The young men exchange glances. The first one says to Anna, "We'll make an appointment."

"Very good," Anna says. She finds the schedule book and, pen inked and poised over a day two weeks in the future, asks, "Your name, please?"

They exchange another glance. The taller boy says, "Miss Deryn Sharp," and Anna receives another surprise. Suddenly she can see quite clearly that it is indeed a girl standing before her desk, and not a fresh-faced boy.

"Oh, excuse me," Anna says, embarrassed despite herself.

"It's all right," Miss Sharp says. A smirk plays at her mouth. "That's the barking point, isn't it?"

Anna accepts that with a polite nod, although she's not entirely certain what she's just been told.

Anna writes down _Miss Sharp_ and looks expectantly at the young man.

He squares his shoulders, lifts his chin, and says, "Aleksandar Ferdinand von Hohenburg."

"That's His Serene Highness _Prince_ Aleksandar," Miss Sharp says, defiant and proud all at once.

Anna's pen skitters and makes a terribly large blot on the book's page, half obscuring the girl's name. She looks up, too astonished to maintain a professional facade.

"Of Austria," the prince adds, pulling a face at Miss Sharp, who shrugs, unrepentant.

Anna puts the pen down and stands. "Excuse me, please," she says. "I – I'll go see if the consul can spare a moment."

"I'll bet you barking will," Miss Sharp mutters behind her back.

It turns out that the consul is not so busy that he can't interrupt his reading for a possible prince. In fact, he ventures out of his office to greet the prince and Miss Sharp before whisking them in.

Anna is asked to bring tea, which she does. She serves it to the prince and Miss Sharp while they establish their bona fides with the consul, and manages not to scald anyone although her hands are shaking with excitement and nerves. She retreats to the corner and stays there, motionless. Tries not to breathe. Listens avidly to the recounting of their miraculous escape of the Aletsch battlefield, their desperate flight across the Swiss countryside, and their tentative plans for the prince's future.

Then she's asked to draft a telegraph message to the British ambassador in Bern. And then, as the prince, the consul, and Miss Sharp leave for the consul's home, Anna is asked to sit quietly in the front office and resume her duties as though nothing has happened.

But she can't do that. Who could?

Anna stares at the typewriter for a moment, putting her thoughts in order, and then she discards the report she was copying for her handler and starts typing up an account of the prince's arrival.

How unbelievable, that this should happen to her – after so many years of nothing but petty intelligence to pass on to the Germans, bits and pieces so small and oft-repeated as to be useless. Valueless. Now God has delivered to her the missing Austrian prince, the one that's had all of the newspapers in an uproar. The one that's had her handler in an uproar.

She'll ask for double her usual fee – no; more than that. She can ask for the moon, the sun, and all of the stars. The Germans will pay it. For this, they will most certainly pay.

She thinks of the debts she'll be able to settle, the medicines for her mother, the lovely new things she'll be able to buy.

She can hardly wait.

.

.

.

.

**Ridiculously long author's note about a mistake I made in "introductions":**

My tagging Alek with the surname "von Hohenberg" wasn't a mistake. In the book, on page 125 (hardcover; the end of chapter 13, regardless) he's explicitly identified as Prince Aleksandar of Hohenberg. In German, that's "von Hohenberg". Further, Franz Ferdinand's surname was not "Ferdinand". He was Franz Ferdinand Karl Ludwig Joseph of Austria-Este. That, of course, precludes Alek from having the surname "Ferdinand" as well.

Now, I did make a mistake: I failed to include "Ferdinand" in Alek's name. I've fixed that. But I want to be very clear about two things:

1) _I did my research! _I did _hours_ of it, on just the issue of what Alek's name might be… which, now that I think about it, is kinda obsessive-compulsive and pathetic.

and

2) I still managed to make a huge frickin' mistake. ::headdesk::

A sincere thank you to the reviewer who brought this to my attention. :)


	17. circumspection

Dr. Barlow is taking her tea in the mess when Count Volger appears.

He's looking for someone – presumably one of the other members of his party – but they must not be present, because when his eyes alight on her, he walks over. It's the polite thing to do.

He's not being polite; or rather he's being more polite than the situation perhaps calls for. An interesting shade of rudeness. To be expected.

"Doctor," he says, giving her a very correct bow. His accent is noticeable, but not unpleasantly thick.

"Count," she says, inclining her head. She stirs her tea, lays down the spoon, and takes a sip. He is still standing beside her table. She waits deliberately for another moment, then, when she is sure of his understanding her own shade of rudeness, says, "Do have a seat, please."

He sits. "May I inquire as to the health of your eggs?"

She allows a small smile. "They're as well as can be expected, given recent conditions."

"I am delighted to hear it," the count says. There is not a trace of delight in his voice.

"How are your engines?"

"In excellent working order, thank you," he says. He adds drily, "Somewhat to my surprise."

She takes another sip. "How wonderful," she says, without a trace of wonder. "Tell me, Count Volger, what's your opinion of Midshipman Sharp? If I may ask."

He's silent for a moment. Perhaps he's wondering why she's asked; perhaps not. "Reckless and overconfident," he finally says. "Although not, I think, without reason."

"My thoughts as well," she says.

He touches the edge of the tablecloth, straightening it by a minute fraction. "It's rare to find such self-possession in a boy that age."

"Midshipman Sharp is a rarity," she agrees. At her feet, Tazza whines. Although Dr. Barlow does not encourage begging, she delicately breaks off a piece of her biscuit and holds it low enough for the thylacine to eat. She notices that Volger tracks the movement, and brushes her fingers off on the napkin in her lap. "I'm sure your ward will miss such a loyal friend."

"Indeed," he says. "I will admit, as much as I dislike the chaos that has overtaken all of my plans… I'm rather glad that Alek has had this experience."

"I would imagine that this has been quite character-building for him," Dr. Barlow says.

Another fractional adjustment of the tablecloth. "So it has."

She's running out of tea to sip, and Volger is glancing around again, looking for his comrade. "Do you play chess, Count Volger?"

He refocuses on her. "Forgive me, Doctor, but I believe we have been for some time already."

"Yes," she says. She smiles at him again. "I believe we have."

He smiles briefly in return, then stands and gives her another bow. "Good day, Doctor."

"Good day," she says, and finishes her tea as he walks away.


	18. prices to pay, part 4

She's in the back of the cathedral. (Lucky they let her in at all.) No one understands why she wants to be here, but she does. She has to see this.

The bride is lovely. Elegant. Graceful. Imperial. Like a perfect china doll.

The groom is… ah, barking hell. He sees her. Their eyes meet. It hurts; she looks away.

She forces herself to sit through the entire long ceremony. The vows. The presentation.

She always knew he couldn't marry her. Always knew this day was coming.

_It won't change anything_, he told her last night.

But.

Oh, it hurts.


	19. before the storm

It's a perfect day for flying. A flock of pigeons take off in a great startled cloud of gray wings, and her eyes track them as they dodge the trees – _hard starboard, lads!_ – and then soar up into the blue freedom of the sky.

She doesn't mean to sigh, but she must, because suddenly her husband is asking her, "Are you all right?"

"Mm? Oh, aye. Just woolgathering," she says, smiling down at him. Her back is to a tree trunk and he is lying on the grass, very scandalously using her lap as a pillow. "It's a lovely day."

Regent's Park in the spring is always lovely. They're on the wide sweep of green by the bandstand, in easy view of the bright clouds of flowers surrounding Queen Mary's Gardens. No airbeasts overhead to frighten the swans and ducks on the water, either.

He acknowledges her statement with a grimace. "It would be lovelier if I didn't have another meeting this afternoon."

"Now, now, Special Military Advisor von Hohenberg," she chides, brushing a strand of red-brown hair away from his forehead. Salted with gray now, it is, but those green eyes are still bright as ever. "No complaints to _me_. Take it up with the War Ministry. Or better yet, those bastard Germans."

He catches her fingers in his and kisses the knuckles before closing his eyes again. "I'd rather. You've never heard so many people argue so fiercely for so long about so little."

"What're they on about now?"

"That I'm wrong."

The breeze tugs at her hair and clothes. It's warm, but she feels cold. She looks from him to the figures of their children, safe and innocent and enjoying the sunlight. Sophie is coaching her younger brothers on their cartwheels and tumbles. Their laughter is a beautiful sound.

And on the Continent a madman is building up an army to come and take all of that away. She knows that, just as her husband knows it: a certainty in one's bones.

They called it the Great War, the War To End All Wars, but it was only a prelude.

"You're not wrong," she says, softly.

"No," he says. He finds her fingers again. Holds on tightly. "God help us."


	20. transcript

**Note:** …and now for something completely different! As in: it's crack. Oh lord, is it ever crack.

I (sincerely) apologize in advance. *runs away to hide*

.

.

.

JOHN HOST: Welcome back to the show! My guest tonight is an author and historian. Her latest book is _The Emperor's Boy: The Extraordinary Life of Deryn Sharp_. Please welcome Mary Sue Scribner!

[APPLAUSE]

HOST: Hi, have a seat. Nice to meet you.

SCRIBNER: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

HOST: So this book.

SCRIBNER: Yes.

HOST: It's about a woman.

SCRIBNER: Yes.

HOST: And yet it's called _The Emperor's __**Boy**_. Uh… explain that one for us?

[LAUGHTER]

HOST: Because she, uh, Deryn Sharp – she is the "boy" in the title, if I'm not mistaken.

SCRIBNER: [LAUGHTER] Well, when she was fifteen, in 1914 – just barely fifteen – she joined the British Air Service as, um, as Dylan Sharp. And so later, when she was with the emperor –

HOST: The last emperor of Austria-Hungary. Alek – Aleksandar I.

SCRIBNER: Right. So people referred to her – derogatively, it was a very big scandal – as his boy.

HOST: One of many nicknames for her, according to the book.

SCRIBNER: Oh yes. One of the nicer ones.

HOST: One of the only ones you could use as a book title without making your publishers' heads explode.

SCRIBNER: [LAUGHTER] That's true, actually!

HOST: Which, and don't tell anyone I said this, would be an okay side effect. If you ask me. What was your favorite nickname? And don't worry about offending the audience – they don't understand what're popularly called, uh, "the big words."

[APPLAUSE, LAUGHTER]

SCRIBNER: My favorite, I think… "that flying whore".

HOST: That's nice. Very Gilded Age and genteel. "Flying whore." I wonder if she and the Flying Nun ever, you know, duked it out.

SCRIBNER: [LAUGHTER] I don't… I don't know.

HOST: That didn't turn up during your research.

SCRIBNER: Strangely, no.

HOST: But, to get back to the book, it's just fascinating that someone – someone so important to, uh, contemporary events, someone who was a true pioneer and, uh, a trailblazer, has been almost completely skipped over in the history books.

SCRIBNER: Yes, yes, absolutely.

HOST: You just don't learn about her in school.

SCRIBNER: No, you don't. She wasn't – remember that at the time, more or less everything she did was grossly shocking to the establishment. There were female aviators, absolutely, but you know, women weren't supposed to fight, they certainly weren't – they weren't war heroes… And then she compounded all of that by getting involved with the emperor.

HOST: And she cussed like a motherf***ing sailor, too.

[APPLAUSE, LAUGHTER]

SCRIBNER: She offended a lot of people. And you know, in the textbooks, they just… left her out of the history. Minimized her.

HOST: They cleaned it up. But what was so amazing for me, reading this, was – Sharp was – You know, you have to admire her, just her determination to follow her dreams to the absolute letter.

SCRIBNER: Yes, exactly.

HOST: She didn't care what she had to do to accomplish her goals.

SCRIBNER: No! She was very willing to, um, think outside the box.

HOST: Right. Breaking expectations. Well, that came back to bite her in the ass.

SCRIBNER: It's also what made her so effective in the war.

HOST: Okay, honestly? That blew me away, her record. She saw combat in both World Wars, set what was it, eleven, twelve aviation records before she was thirty -

SCRIBNER: Twelve.

HOST: Yeah! And girlfriend bagged herself an emperor. When she was fifteen and dressed like a boy. Which is actually – what's the word I'm looking for?

SCRIBNER: Romantic?

HOST: No no no, the other one… "Perverted."

[LAUGHTER]

HOST: Not that there's anything wrong with that.

SCRIBNER: They got married, you know.

HOST: I did not know that. You know, you probably should have put that into the book.

[LAUGHTER]

SCRIBNER: I did.

HOST: And what – what chapter would that be in?

SCRIBNER: I think I mention it in the preface.

[LAUGHTER]

HOST: And there go the last shreds of my journalistic pretences.

SCRIBNER: But they did, they got married. Had children and everything. After he abdicated in 1922.

HOST: Tell the, the story about Edward's abdication.

SCRIBNER: Oh, that one. Okay. Well, Aleksandar abdicated, and he and Deryn married, and then they traveled the world for a number of years. And in 1936, when King Edward, in England – when he abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, you know, it sort of brought the Deryn Sharp scandal up again. And so a reporter tracked her down and asked her what she thought of Mrs. Simpson. And she said –

HOST: "Imitation is the sincerest form of motherf***ing flattery."

[LAUGHTER]

SCRIBNER: More or less! Yes. She said, "Luckily only one of us is a perfect sodding bitch, or history would never get us sorted."

HOST: Ouch. That's a – I believe the technical term is "a major burn."

SCRIBNER: Oh yes. And talk about unprintable, at the time.

HOST: Well, it's a fascinating read, and definitely a story that more people should know.

SCRIBNER: Thank you. Wow.

HOST: And that's it. The book is _The Emperor's Boy: The Extraordinary Life of Deryn Sharp_ by Mary Sue Scribner. Look for it in bookstores. Thank you for coming!

[APPLAUSE]


	21. trapped on the wire, part 4

**Note:** So much was happening "off-camera", as it were, in the previous parts that I wanted a chance to fill in the blanks a bit.

_._

_._

_Young men, soldiers, nineteen fourteen  
__Marching through countries they'd never seen  
__Virgins with rifles, a game of charades  
__All for a children's crusade_

_- from "Children's Crusade" by Sting_

.

.

**I. the castle**

Alek has the field glasses, so he sees the German scouts first. "They're coming," he says, which sets her heart to pounding. A few moments later, he says, "Good news – it's a two-seater."

"It's about barking time we had some luck," Deryn says, scowling at the German scouts she still can't see. Alek watches them a squick longer, to better calculate their speed, and then the two of them retreat to the inside of the castle.

She's exhausted and hungry, but is just as glad to be occupied with surviving long enough to get off of this mountain. She suspects that when she has a moment to sit quietly, she's going to fall straight to pieces. The noise the _Leviathan_ made - that horrible death call - she'll have nightmares about that for the rest of her life.

Alek's gone serious and grim, too. Some of that might be due to the gash in his side. He's moving more slowly than usual, but he's sworn several times it's not going to keep him from piloting. It didn't look that bad when she bandaged it earlier, either, although it certainly bled enough at first. Nothing more she can do but cross her fingers and hope he's telling the truth.

"If we can get them inside…" Alek says, looking about thoughtfully. "Far enough inside that they can't be found immediately… We could gain hours of time. It might be the only way we can escape."

"They're German," Deryn points out. "That doesn't mean they're daft. Which you'd have to be to come inside this place, knowing someone's here who wants to kill you."

Alek frowns. "You're right," he says. "We could ambush them in the courtyard… No. Too noisy, and they might have a chance to signal the others. You're good at mad plans, Dylan – what do you think?"

Oh, she has a mad plan, all right. It came to her a moment ago as he talked, and, she has to say, it's brilliant and sure to work, and God knows the Germans deserve a taste of their own medicine. It just depends on a few small details. First of which: "Deryn. It's Deryn, not Dylan."

He looks at her blankly.

She huffs in exasperation (and nerves, but she'll never admit that). "I'm a barking _girl_, you ninny."

Comprehension dawns across his face. His green eyes widen in shock. "How –"

"It doesn't matter now," she says quickly. "But it's how we're going to get those sodding Clanker bastards in here."

Alek blinks once or twice, swallows, and then appears to accept the truth about her without further difficulty. Deryn breathes a sigh of relief; she'd expected at least a lecture about war being no place for a girl. (As if she has a choice about it, now.) But all he does is give her a firm nod.

"Right," he says, holding out his hand. "A pleasure to meet you, Deryn. What's the plan?"

She takes his hand and shakes it. The smile on her face probably isn't very nice. "How do you say _'help please'_ in Clanker-talk?"

.

.

.

**II. the wilderness**

It's not until they're within a day's walk of Zurich that he breaks.

Until that moment, Alek has trudged along, doing everything that needs doing, forcing his tired, hungry, and injured body to take another step, climb another hill, face another danger. He's killed in cold blood, piloted a stolen scout walker across a glacier and down a mountain, outrun and outsmarted what feels like the entire German army. Still afraid of pursuit, he's hidden in train cars, stolen food and clothes from unwary farmers, and hiked through every godforsaken kilometer of forest in Switzerland.

He's learned that the only person left for him to trust is guilty of a monumental lie.

And all of this so hard on the heels of his first, similar flight across Austria. But he hasn't cried, not once, through all of it. Not since that day he learned of his parents' deaths. He's carried on with dry eyes and a stone heart, as if he weren't the last survivor of his family. As if Bauer, Hoffman, Klopp and Volger hadn't died seeing him to safety while the _Leviathan_ and all its crew also perished.

Then.

He climbs the ladder to the hayloft and spreads out the blanket, trying to ignore the dull burn across his side where the wound he received in the _Leviathan_'s crash has yet to heal. The hay is dusty and uncomfortable, the blanket smells strongly of horse although there are none in residence, and if he and Deryn are caught here by the barn's owner, there's sure to be trouble.

"All right," he says in a low voice, looking over his shoulder for Deryn, who's supposed to be joining him with what little bit of food they have. There's no sign of her, however.

Alek warily peers over the edge of the hayloft and, in the swiftly fading twilight, sees her sitting in the scattered straw and packed dirt at the base of the ladder. Knees drawn up, blonde head bent over. Shoulders shaking.

Stiffly, because of the wound, he climbs down the ladder and puts a hand on her shoulder. She pulls away from the touch, wiping at her face with her grimy shirtsleeve, and he realizes she's crying. She's never cried yet. He didn't think she ever would; that she, too, had turned to stone. That she was soldiering on just like him.

But now she's crying.

"They killed the ship," she says, voice thick and wavering. "Not just the crew – Captain Hobbes and Mr. Rigby and even N-newkirk and Dr. Barlow – but they killed the _ship_, Alek. All those poor beasties. Sodding bastards didn't even think twice about it… And then we did the same barking thing to those scouts. And - it was my idea, it was all my idea, what we did. D-did you see them?" She presses her hands over her face. Confesses, muffled, "I can't stop seeing them."

"We had to," he says, but he doesn't mean it; it's just something hollow to say. And yes, he sees them every time he closes his eyes.

He sits beside her, briefly stretching the dull burn into a hot line.

"I wanted to fly," she says, wiping her eyes again. "I didn't want –"

She breaks off, and he puts a hand on her shoulder again. This time she doesn't pull away. Instead she takes several deep, ragged breaths. But her voice still cracks as she says, "I want to go home. I want my mam."

His stone heart is fracturing, and there's a black whirlpool of grief on the other side. "So do I," he says, and the vast and terrible truth of that is enough to break him. The tears come, and they refuse to stop. He cries for his father, his mother, the good men whose courage and sacrifice carried him so near to safety. He cries for everything he's lost and the nothing he's gained, and somewhere in midst of that Deryn is pulling him into a fierce hug, crying with him, and he holds on to her as tightly as he can while loss rips him into jagged pieces.

His friend. The only person he has left.

Eventually the storm eases, enough to let them retreat to the hayloft where they won't be found out first thing in the morning when the farmer comes around for chores. They huddle together on the dusty, horse-smelling blanket until exhaustion triumphs over grief.

When Alek wakes, the morning sun is shining clear and calm through gaps in the roof, the fathomless black whirlpool has been reduced to an empty, echoing ache in his heart, and he is still holding fast to Deryn, who is still holding fast to him.

He closes his eyes. Breathes in the scent of her instead of hay and horses.

Slowly, cautiously, he starts to feel something like… hope.

.

.

.

**III. the train**

One of the porters slides open the door to the cabin and murmurs, "Excusez-moi, monsieur," to the British ambassador from Bern, handing the man a folded note and bowing politely at the same time.

He adds more, but Deryn's knowledge of French only extends to the important bits: greetings and cursing.

The ambassador takes the note, opens it, reads it, flicks a glance at Deryn and Alek, who are sitting across from him. He says something to the porter and stands. "Back in a moment, Your Highness," he says. "Miss."

"What was that about?" Deryn asks as soon as the door closes again.

"There's a concern," Alek says. "They were careful not to say what."

Deryn scowls and would lean back, but her dress doesn't allow that much movement. The ambassador's wife had it made for her, back in Bern. It's grey, which "makes her eyes glow" or some such blether. There's a hat, too, which she refuses to wear on the train. She hates all of it. War is no time to be stuffed into skirts. Alek, on the other hand, was stuffed into a French army officer's uniform, and looks every inch the young, handsome prince. _His_ eyes are glowing. As would anyone's if they didn't have to suffer a corset.

"Probably sodding Clanker bastards wanting to kill us," she says. "Are you dead certain about this? Going to London, I mean."

"If King George is willing to support my claim –" He shrugs. "Knowing the truth about my parents' deaths, and the papal dispensation, may be enough to force Austria-Hungary out of their alliance with Germany. That could end the war. It's worth it."

"You'll be a puppet," she says. When he takes the throne, he'll owe it all to King George. She's new to kingly politics, but that's clearly not the sort of favor you can ever pay back.

"It's worth it," he says again.

"And better to hide out in London than in that barking frozen castle," she says, trying to spark a laugh. Except it's not very funny.

Especially since they turned the castle into a tomb.

Alek makes a noise of agreement, then sighs and stares out the window at the passing French countryside. They'll be in Paris soon. And then it's on to London.

Deryn tries not to think about what waits for _her_ in London. Or the long, shameful journey home to her mother and the aunties. At least she'll have a fancy new dress and hat to show for it.

Alek turns away from the window and reads her mind. "Why did you tell them? In Zurich. You could have gone on pretending. I wouldn't have revealed you."

She feels a small glow, hearing that. But the loyalty extends both ways, and she wants to make sure he knows it. "Aye, but if I had gone on as Dylan, and they found out the truth – and they would have – then I thought, well, they might not believe your story either."

He frowns, mulling it over.

She adds, "You only have the one chance to be Emperor. There'll be other chances for me to fly."

Just on nothing so glorious as the _Leviathan_.

She has a flash of memory – the airbeast hit, everything in chaos, men screaming, fear so thick it clings to the back of your throat – and shudders. Maybe "glorious" is the wrong word.

Alek places his hand over hers where it rests on the cushioned seat. Squeezes her fingers once, briefly, then relaxes. "I'll need someone to show me around London," he says. "I've never been."

"Aye," she says, venturing a smile. "Take you to the Zoo, if you like. And maybe a trip north to visit my family in Glasgow."

_That_ would fix the aunties nicely: a new dress, a new hat, and a prince. Ha!

"I would like that," he says. He isn't smiling. In fact he looks very serious and nervous –

She has just enough time to think, _Blisters, he's going to kiss me_, before he does. It's soft and sweet and only lasts a moment, and it leaves her breathless.

He pulls back and meets her eyes. She's sure she's blushing like a perfect ninny – which is quite all right, as he's doing the same.

Suddenly she's grinning, and so is he, and she can't wait to reach London.

She clears her throat, but before she can tell him he'd better not start things he doesn't intend to finish, the door opens and the both of them are snapped back to reality.

The ambassador gives a little bow and says, "So sorry, Your Highness, but there's a problem at the station. Apparently this journey isn't as covert as we thought – the conductor has received a telegraph saying that a large crowd has gathered to welcome you."

"Maybe if you lot weren't so quick with the 'Your Highness'," Deryn says. Barking cheeky of her, really; as the Your Highness is still holding her hand, she supposes she can get away with it. The ambassador gives her a bit of a frowning glare, and she tacks on a half-hearted, "Sir."

The ambassador turns slightly purple, but chooses to ignore her, instead addressing Alek again: "We're arranging for a car to meet us and take us to the airfield by a different route. You should be in no danger, Your Highness."

Alek says, stiff and imperious, "You're certain of that?"

"You'll have an armed guard, and it's a short trip – no more than ten or fifteen minutes, Your Highness." The ambassador adds, dry, "I hardly think the Germans will try to march a land frigate through the middle of Paris."

"There's more than one way to attack," Alek says. "They proved that in Sarajevo."

The ambassador looks affronted. "Your Highness, please. I will _personally_ vouch for your safety."

As if the ambassador's good reputation will matter to Alek if he's dead.

Deryn feels slightly ill at the idea.

But clearly this is not an argument they're going to win. Alek says, "In that case, I can't have any further objections, can I?"

Deryn bites down on her snort of laughter. The ambassador, oblivious, seats himself again. Takes out his pocketwatch, consults it, closes his eyes, and promptly begins to snore.

Deryn waits until the pompous twit is well and truly asleep. Then - "You'll be fine," she says to Alek, and it's a promise, not the empty reassurance of the ambassador. "I'll take the bullet for you, aye?"

He whips his attention back to her, dark green eyes blazing. "_No_," he says, furious. "Nein. No. No. Don't you dare."

She wants to kiss him, but not with the ambassador snoring right there. Instead she grips his hand more firmly. "I'll dare to protect you if I please, Your Highness, and don't barking think to tell me otherwise!"

_Now_ he smiles. She smiles back.

They sit in silence as the countryside gives way to towns, factories, traffic, people. Paris.

She holds his hand tightly the entire time, hidden by the folds of her ridiculous skirts.

The ill feeling never really goes away.


	22. trapped on the wire, part 5

_._

_._

_The flower of England face down in the mud  
__And stained in the blood of a whole generation_

_- from "Children's Crusade" by Sting_

_._

_._

The man with the gun is named Dieter Hesse.

He arrives at the train station late – later than he would have liked, _damn_ this leg of his – only to discover two things: the Paris Metropolitan Police have closed it to the public, and there's a crowd of people completely blocking the street.

Hesse finds a place on the fringes of the crowd, just within view of the station entrance, but his efforts to move closer are frustrated.

Everyone in Paris, it seems, has turned out to witness the imminent arrival of the Austrian prince's train, clutching small flags gone limp in the heat. A festival atmosphere hangs over the street, despite the stifling press of so many human bodies. The prince is famous: he fled the hated Germans, traveling across Austria-Hungary and Switzerland all but on foot, and is now traveling on to England in triumph.

Everyone in Paris, it seems, wants to say that they saw him.

Hesse is not there to see the prince. He's there to put a bullet in the boy's head.

And he's not happy about it, either. He's perfectly capable of shooting a child in the head, of course – has done it before – but this is not the sort of work he was promised when he came to Paris. He received the telegraph ordering him to kill the prince last night, too late to arrange for one of the disaffected Parisian youths, of which there are so many, to do it instead. Just as well; the anarchists won't work with him, and the Marxists would rather complain.

Such short notice. He has to be the one. He'll almost certainly be captured, and executed. Perhaps the kaiser will intervene. Or perhaps he'll escape.

Or, perhaps, he won't have a chance to shoot.

The crowd situation is only worsened when the police began clearing the street. They're joined by soldiers, some mounted on those godless fabricated beasts. Hesse manages to stay within sight of the entrance, but he has no shot from this position.

He looks up at the buildings. If only there had been time to arrange for a proper sniper's nest.

A black carriage, drawn by a tigeresque, pulls up to the station's entrance. Two policemen detach from the others and have a short, intense conversation with the driver. It involves hand gestures and pointing along the streets.

Hesse understands. They're talking about the route the prince will be taking to the airfield.

A shout goes up farther down the street. The train is approaching. Everyone stretches and cranes to see it as the elephantines trudge into the station and out of sight. There is a long wait in which the sun beats down on everyone's heads and the waiting tigeresque coughs and paws at the ground, restless. Others in the crowd might be wondering why the beast is there, instead of a more docile monstrosity; Hesse knows. It's another line of protection against people like him.

Then, just as it seems the waiting will never end, people begin to emerge from the station: French soldiers first, boots polished, buttons gleaming. To their credit, they look alert and suspicious. A girl appears next. She too is smartly dressed, though her blonde hair is scandalously short, and she looks about her with surprise and uncertainty, one hand on her stylish hat.

Then she laughs, takes off the hat and waves it like a victory flag. Calls out "Bonjour!" The crowd erupts in wild greetings.

Still laughing, she turns back to the station entrance. The soldiers have been joined by policemen and they all stand to attention. The girl snaps off a crisp salute of her own as a boy steps out to thunderous acclaim. He's wearing a French army officer's uniform, an affectation which the crowd loves, and he takes the girl's arm with a wide smile directed only at her.

There are no photographs of the prince; a precaution against exactly this sort of thing, presumably, but Hesse has a written description wired from Berlin. He compares the memory of that description to the boy before him, being thorough out of habit. The height is right, the hair color – the boy seems the proper age – and the girl cannot be anyone other than the one reported as the prince's companion in Zurich and Bern.

Dieter Hesse is certain. Now he only needs a clear shot.

The prince, his companion, and his escort descend the station steps to the waiting carriage. The prince chivalrously hands the girl up first and climbs in after. More waves to the crowd, more cheers. It's an open carriage – good for would-be assassins. Soldiers and police hop on the running boards, effectively blocking the passengers.

Not so good.

Mounted soldiers force the crowds back further. Hesse is caught up in the mass. He struggles to stay near the street and is rewarded with Parisian shoves and oaths. Something cracks into his bad leg and he staggers and is almost pulled down under the blind force that is several hundred people moving at once.

Hesse recovers his balance. Learns his lesson. Limps and stumbles along with the crowd until it deposits him along a street perpendicular to the one the prince's vehicle will be taking.

He manages to edge outward to the curb until there is no one in front of him – a clear sightline at last. Perhaps he can step out into the middle of the street and fire at the prince.

But even as he thinks this, and thinks also of the excuses he will have to make to Berlin when he misses (his pistol is not reliable at that distance), he sees that the black carriage is turning. Coming up the street toward him.

Hesse feels a sharp prickle at the back of his neck. He hardly dares to breathe.

Shouts of "_Pas comme ça!_" and "_L'autre rue!_" from the soldiers. The driver pulls hard on the reins and the tigeresque comes to a snarling stop. Clearly unhappy, and pushed to the limits of its tolerance by the activity of the crowd, it bats one massive paw at the people around it; there's a collective gasp and scramble.

The soldiers jump down from the car to protect the bystanders, bring the beast under control, and convince it to turn around.

Hesse's heart skips. The prince is almost directly in front of him, scanning the crowd, one hand on the girl's arm. She's taken off her hat and is tensed as if for a fight.

But they're looking in the wrong direction.

Hesse takes a step forward, raises the pistol, and aims.

At this distance, he can't miss.

Everything slows down.

He sees with perfect clarity when the girl, by chance, turns her head in his direction. She sees him and the weapon as his finger applies pressure to the trigger.

Her eyes widen.

He realizes that if she moves, she'll block his shot. If she moves he will have to hope he drops her and fire again. He might not have time.

In this infinite moment before he fires, the girl's eyes meet his, and he knows she's going to move.

The pistol kicks in his hand. The girl moves. The muzzle flashes. In all the noise and confusion, the sharp crack is audible only to the people immediately around Hesse, who recoil – in annoyance, at first.

The bullet that should have struck the prince in the head catches the girl in the shoulder, almost the neck. She jerks. Clutches at the prince, trying to pull him down. Trying to put herself, again, between the prince and Hesse. Shouts something.

The people around Hesse, and the soldiers around the prince, are realizing what's going on now. He's about to lose his chance.

The prince stands to cover the girl's wound with his hands, turns his head to call for help. The bullet has nicked an artery. She's bleeding. Profusely.

Still trying to pull him down.

Coolly, Hesse aims again. Fires.

This round hits the prince high in the chest, on the left, over the heart. It's a perfect shot. A fatal shot.

Blood. The prince collapses.

Time speeds up again.

Police and soldiers and angry members of the crowd swarm Hesse. Drag him down. For a moment he thinks they'll kill him right there, too, but then the soldiers pull him free and haul him away. The crowd is screaming; the tigeresque is roaring.

"God is on our side!" he shouts in German. But no one can hear him.

.

.

.

In the carriage soldiers swarm over the prince. He waves off help, trying to get to the girl, but they're having none of it. They hold him back, hold him still, and he's too weak to resist.

"_Es ist nichts_," he says, over and over, as blood slowly turns the front of his borrowed uniform black. Someone presses a wad of cloth to the wound. It's soaked through instantly.

The soldiers tending to the girl stand back and cross themselves.

The prince closes his eyes, squeezes them tightly. Gasps for breath. It's obvious there's some pain; tears escape from the corners of his eyes and slide down in clean tracks. His voice fades to a mumble.

"Your Highness!" someone yells, slapping his face, trying to keep him awake and talking.

He opens his eyes - dark green and unfocused. Dimming. He grips the hand offered him. "_Es ist nichts_," he repeats, fainter. A whisper amidst screams. Overhead, the sky is blue and clear, with white clouds scudding; a lovely day for flying.

"Your Highness!"

He doesn't answer.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

**Note:** Well. Ahem.

I had a little too much fun writing this one, I think.

Originally I was going to have them both make a clean escape. Then I was going to have only Deryn die. Then I decided to just go All Quiet On the Western Front with it – this did begin as a "worst case scenario" ficlet, after all. Anyway. I'm done with this horrible, horrible, depressing idea now, in case you were wondering. :)

I've deliberately echoed some circumstances of the actual Sarajevo assassination in several places, most notably the wrong turn and the final words. "Es ist nichts" means "It is nothing." (In real life Franz Ferdinand also said, "Don't die, Sophie! Live for our children!" which is, I think, absolutely heartbreaking.)


	23. curses

**Note:** Because, honestly now. Biology, people.

PS: Is it wrong that this is literally the second fic idea I had after reading Leviathan? I mean, what does that say about me? (Other than: _I'm female_ - and, as always, _I write slow_.)

PPS: I apologize for the dreadful pun at the end... but not really. :)

.

.

.

Deryn discovers her second mistake while the _Leviathan_ is crossing the Peloponnesian peninsula.

Her first mistake, of course, was bringing Alek aboard – or more accurately, losing her barking mind and mooning over him. As if her disguise isn't thin enough already! And _him_ the heir to an empire, and thinking _she's_ a boy, to boot. Even if she reveals her secret, it's all impossible, and she's firmly told herself that.

She's also sworn that she'll stay away from him as much as she can, which ought to be easy, considering how much work she has to do on the airship (double than most, thanks to Dr. Barlow). But somehow, in her bits and pieces of free time, she always finds herself right there beside him. Mooning. Like the soft-headed fool of a girl she really is.

That, then, was her first mistake. Her second is even worse, and it's another thing she never considered when she hatched her mad plan to sneak into the Air Service.

She wakes up in her cabin, guts twisting and clenching in knifelike bursts, and thinks, _Oh __**no**__._

She knows this feeling. She doesn't get it often – and never as bad as her mother, who suffers terribly, like clockwork: headaches, backaches, cramps that drive her to bed – but she knows this feeling.

She stuffs the corner of her blanket into her mouth so she won't scream in frustration at her own stupidity. Then she gets herself up and dressed, even though she's not scheduled to be anywhere for hours yet.

Daft. That's the only word for it. She's absolutely barking daft.

Nine months out of ten her only proof of womanhood is a few small spots in her knickers, and indeed she didn't even notice the last time at all. But now biology is having a laugh at her, and, she realizes (as she inhales sharply on a particularly nasty spasm), it's laughing hard.

She stands for a moment in her cabin, a hand pressing down on her twisting innards, and thinks about where she needs to go. Of course she doesn't have the necessaries, and the ship's surgeon is unlikely to stock them, either. Dr. Barlow might – but once the theft is found out (and it will be, and quickly; the lady boffin is _that_ annoying), it'd be tantamount to planting a flag on top of the _Leviathan_'s spine, proclaiming, _Hey, all you lot! There's a girl hiding on board!_

So Dr. Barlow is out. Deryn looks about the cabin. She doesn't have spare clothes she can tear apart… someone's bound to notice if her washtowel and blanket are suddenly missing bits… what she needs is a source of linens whose disappearance can't be traced to her.

Deryn sorts through the other possibilities and hits on one she doesn't much like, but is feasible at least. It also offers the smallest chance of getting her bum tossed off the ship.

She exits her cabin and makes her way to Newkirk's. No one notices a middy running about, even at an odd hour like this, and she sneaks in without any trouble. Filching the wadded-up blanket from beneath his head without waking him is a wee bit more difficult, but it's nothing she can't manage. All she has to do is ease it out, slowly and steadily…

Her innards tie themselves into a sharp knot, and she pulls harder than she meant to. The blanket pops free and Newkirk's head thumps down. He makes a sudden _snork_ noise.

She holds her breath. She might be able to pass this off as a prank, but she'd rather not.

Newkirk rolls over without waking. Deryn quickly folds up the blanket small as she can and hopes she looks inconspicuous as she slips out of Newkirk's cabin and heads back to her own.

Now she can tear the cloth into strips… change them out in the darkness of the head when she goes off-watch. It won't be ideal, and she'll have to be vigilant about the mess - God forbid the hydrogen sniffers get too curious about her - but she can manage.

"Only a few days, aye?" she tells herself.

In front of her – too close – Alek's voice says, "Until what?"

Barking sodding _spiders_. Ten years off her life, _and_ her guts choose that moment to jackknife. She fights to keep the grimace from her face and the nicked blanket behind her back. Alek's clearly just come off egg duty: no grease on his hands from the engines, no other reason for him to be awake and wandering the halls.

_And what's __**your**__ reason?_ her mind prompts. She shushes the thought, hoping he won't ask. "U-until Constantinople," she stammers out. Clears her throat. Smiles at him - cocky and swaggering. Hopes the smile hides her discomfort. Wishes he would get out of the way. Wishes the slow painful grind of her organs and muscles would bugger off for two minutes so she can _think_.

He nods. Yawns – covers his mouth politely, of course. Then frowns. "You're not standing watch this late, are you?"

Blisters.

"No," she says. Inspiration strikes – and it's only half a lie: "On my way back from the head." She ought to say goodnight and clear out, but daft mooning girl that she is, now that she's talking to him, she can't bring herself to stop. "How's the egg room?"

"Warm," he says, wiping at his forehead. He's sheened with sweat, which helps her state of mind not at all. "And dull. I think I prefer the engines."

"I could always sneak in, keep you company," she suggests. It makes her pulse thrum just thinking about it: a warm, dark room, only the two of them for hours on end... All the same, it's probably the worst idea she's had since she thought she could join the Air Service without planning for her -

"No," Alek says, shaking his head in what seems to be regret. "I wouldn't want you to get in trouble with Dr. Barlow."

"Aye," she says. "Any _more_ trouble, you mean. She's a barking menace."

He grins at that, and her heart twists sharper than anything her lower organs might be doing. _Daft_, she tells herself, and discreetly takes a fresh grip on the blanket behind her back.

"Well, in any case," he says, "good night, Dylan."

"Good night," she says, and has to half-turn to let them pass each other. Luckily she remembers to keep the blanket out of sight. He puts a hand on her shoulder as he goes. Friendly. Comradely. The sort of thing a brother-in-arms might do without second thought or a whisper of ill intent.

The touch burns clean through her clothes and skin, down to her very bones.

She escapes back to her cabin and lets the blanket drop to the floor, the better to press her hands to her aching guts instead of to her shoulder. She can still feel where his fingers pressed. Five separate brands, and wouldn't she have liked more. She pushes out a breath and closes her eyes.

Back home, one of her mother's favorite (and barking silliest) objections had been that Deryn would forget herself – would become more like a boy than not, never fit for a woman's role again. As if a pair of middy's trousers could scramble her attic _that _badly!

She wishes her mother were here, now, if only to see that worry laid safely to rest.

Should she ever forget, her body seems intent on doing a bloody good job of reminding her.


	24. natural selection

Alek is sitting with Dylan in the mess, going over sketches of the engines.

A shadow. They look up.

Dr. Barlow leans over. Examines the sketches. Flips through them without asking. The brim of her boffin's hat casts shadows over her face.

"We'll win, you know," she says. Meaning the Darwinists. Meaning the war.

"You're very sure," Alek says, offended despite himself.

"With good reason. A machine," Barlow says, "isn't alive."

"Of course not," Alek says.

"Nor is it driven to _stay_ alive, at all costs, in all conditions." She smiles. Gives the sketches back to Dylan. "So. Advantage ours."


	25. where his eagles never flew

**Note:** If you didn't get the Super Extra Obscure shout-out in "introductions", well, here come a few that should be a little more obvious. And Google-able.

Many thanks to UKHoneyB for first introducing me to _The Eagle_'s favorite pilot of the future. :)

.

.

.

Her grandchildren run out of the kitchen just as her son comes in. He automatically dodges the small bodies hurtling past him towards adventure. "Where're they off to, then?" he asks her.

"Venus, I believe," she says, smiling, offering him the last of the biscuits. "Or Mars. Difficult to tell."

Her son – so handsome; the very image of his da – takes a biscuit, then picks up the topmost boys' weekly from the stack on the table. The yellow eagle of the logo, boldly emblazoned on its red square, fairly glows in the sunlight. "Tell me they didn't make you read _all_ of them."

She makes a noise of assent and sits down at the table beside him. "I didn't mind, lovey. That's what grannies are for."

"What did you think of it? Brilliant art, isn't it?"

"Oh, aye," she says, admiring the beautiful, full-color panels of the feature strip. Her fingers itch, looking at the painstaking detail work in every frame. No two-pence newsprint comic book from overseas, that's for certain, but real _art_, on real paper. She would love to draw some of those spaceships herself, but the arthritis… Well. It's enough just to look. "Two pages of it, painted, every week – I don't know how Mr. Hampson has the energy. Or the imagination."

He idly flips the pages back and forth. "The stories are good, too, aren't they? The ones with that Treen bloke are my favorites."

She makes another noise. This one is not quite so enthusiastic.

Her son pauses and looks at her sideways, mouth twitching. "Say it, Mum."

"I like it, now," she says, tapping the stack of _The Eagle_ magazines, "no mistake."

Now he's grinning full out. "But."

"But they _could_ give that girl more to do."


	26. before the storm, part 2: anschluss

His daughter is playing the piano. Schubert. He can hear it even out here in the garden. The music lilts and lifts, pleasant in the golden afternoon, completely at odds with the black weight in his heart.

He wonders if he should go in and ask her to play something else. But it's a point of pride with her: all of her favorite composers are Austrian.

Footsteps crunch on the path behind him. He half-turns and sees his wife approaching.

He came out here to be alone; he realizes, now, that he wants her company more. He holds out his hand, and she takes it. Her fingers are warm and strong in his, callused by work, by life.

He wonders if his touch is as cold as he imagines. He wonders if he can blame it all on the chill of early spring.

"Bad news, then?" she asks. A breeze flutters the budding leaves on the trees and lifts her blonde hair.

"Yes," he says, heavy. "I would think so."

Five years he's been waiting for this, if not longer. And it still came as a shock.

He pulls the slip of telegraph paper from his pocket. She unfolds it and reads.

"Bloody barking _hell_," she says. She looks up from the telegraph, anger and worry for him writ clear on her face, and abruptly he needs to pull her close. Needs to put his arms around her. Needs her arms around him.

The world he was born into, _kaiserlich und königlich_, vanished half a lifetime ago – dismantled, stripped for parts, rebuilt in new and strange configurations. He knows; he was there. But somehow he never expected to lose the pieces that were left.

_Anschluss._

One small word. Polite. Politic. Innocuous.

Devastating.

"I'm sorry," she says.

He holds her more tightly. Thinks of the millions of innocents now within the grasp of the world's new evil, many of them willingly. Many of them welcoming the wolf across their thresholds. His frozen heart aches for the people he will always think of as his responsibility – the people he left, the people he cannot save from themselves.

"I'm sorry for _them_," he says. "And I'm relieved -" his voice catches, roughens "- relieved that the children aren't there."

She studies him for a moment, then stretches up to drop a kiss on his mouth. Lightly, she says, "Aye. Just remember who argued for London, and who for Vienna."

He smiles at this ghost of an old disagreement, knowing she's brought it up deliberately, not minding the diversion. "I thought you argued for Glasgow."

"Close enough."

He takes a breath. Leans against his wife, his strength, his comrade-in-arms. They'll face this coming storm together, as they've faced so much else.

Inside the house, one of his sons shouts something; his daughter shouts back. The Schubert piece stops abruptly.

The last note lingers.

.

.

.

.

**Note:** I didn't ever intend to do a second part to "before the storm", but this idea was so close to that one, I thought I'd take the path of least resistance.

It's worth saying that both of Franz Ferdinand's real sons were sent to Dachau for being outspokenly anti-Hitler.


	27. dirty hands

**Note:** So. I won't be updating for a while… there's this book I'm gonna be reading, here in a couple of days. :D

(In the meantime, I made a fanmix thingee! It's on my LJ; the link is on my profile.)

.

.

.

Try as he might, Alek simply can't get his hands clean. The engine grease is maddeningly stubborn, and the _Leviathan_ doesn't have the proper facilities for a thorough scrubbing.

He shouldn't even try; the black grease is insidious as well as stubborn, working its way into every crease and crack. Indeed, many masters of mechaniks are perfectly happy to surrender and walk about with black-grimed fingernails and knuckles for the rest of their lives.

But the part of him that is still very aware of his imperial heritage – the part of him that still expects his mother to catch him out playing soldier – itches at the idea of not being clean.

So he stands over the washbasin in his cabin, vainly attempting to clean his fingers, at least, before he has to use them for eating. It's a form of madness, he's sure. He doesn't even have a proper bit of soap. All he's doing is rubbing the skin of his hands raw.

"Oi, catch!" a voice says from the door, and Alek half-turns just in time to see Dylan toss a small, lumpy brown rectangle. Startled, he does manage to catch it nonetheless.

"All I could find," Dylan says apologetically, coming into the cabin. "If Newkirk asks, you've no idea where his barking soap went, aye?"

"I didn't mean for you to steal it," Alek says. He turns the chunk of soap over in his hands, secretly fascinated. It's rock hard, deeply cracked here and there, and not at all like the soaps they used in the palace. Those were chosen by his mother. Perfumed. Soft. Delicate. This is Air Service issue; it shows.

Dylan shrugs. A sly smile appears. "I'm sure Newkirk didn't mean for me to nick it either. But it'll be ages before he misses it."

Alek wets the soap in the basin and, with much effort, works up a thin and begrudging lather. "Thank you."

"Anytime," Dylan says. "The engines are running fine, then?"

"_Now_ they are, yes." He rubs his hands together, hard and fast, trying to get one particular streak of grease lifted. The grease remains; his skin is getting chapped and red. "I see why Klopp doesn't bother. This is never going to come clean."

"Keep at it, Clanker. You might have it off by this time next year."

He chuffs a little, in mingled annoyance and amusement, and keeps scrubbing. After a moment, he glances up at his friend. Dylan is watching him – more specifically, watching his soapy, black-streaked hands – with a peculiar expression, one that's both intense and unfocused at the same time.

"Dylan?"

The other boy blinks and snaps out of his reverie. "Oh," he says. Clears his throat and offers a lopsided smile. "You know. Just… trying to remember if I've done the rounds with Tazza yet."

Alek frowns. For some reason he thinks Dylan isn't being honest, although why his friend would lie – and about what – he has no idea. He thinks about it for a moment longer, then dismisses the suspicion altogether. Eight hours hanging over the side of the _Leviathan_, fighting the engines; no wonder he's imagining things. "Have you?"

Dylan shrugs and moves toward the cabin door. "It all blurs together after a few days, doesn't it? Better to do it twice, I suppose."

"Right. Thank you again," Alek says, lifting the soap. His fingernails are still caked with black gunk, he sees, and can't suppress a sigh. "Not that it's helping."

"Aye, it's a world of hard choices," Dylan says, grinning again, holding up his own begrimed hands. "Up to your elbows in oil with the Clankers, or up to 'em in clart with us."

Alek laughs, Dylan leaves, and Alek resumes his attempts to clean his hands.

Eventually he gives up. He has to; the _Leviathan_'s cooks don't serve food all night. He shakes his hands over the basin, dries them on the towel, and makes a mental note to return Newkirk's soap. (Preferably without Newkirk being aware of it.) Then he goes off to eat his dinner with engine grease under his nails.

His mother, he knows, would be horrified, but he likes to think that his father would understand.


	28. square one

**Note: **Here there be spoilers for Behemoth, cap'n! Delicious, delicious spoilers. *drools* LOL

Still. Don't read this before you read _that_.

.

.

.

"Here we are again," Alek says, gesturing with the tip of his saber. Sky, spine, fencing lessons… Volger having declined to participate in favor, no doubt, of further scheming. The _Leviathan_ is crossing the Urals instead of the Mediterranean; otherwise things are remarkably similar to a day over a month in the past.

And of course nothing at all is the same.

"Aye, just like old times," Dylan says, sighing. His posture has improved significantly, but Alek still has to correct it; a trickier maneuver now that there's a perspicacious loris perched on the other boy's shoulder. Alek picks up Bovril and places the creature on the _Leviathan's_ thick membrane, where it's happy enough, as the other loris is sitting among the spectators.

That Dr. Barlow is necessarily part of the audience, too, is just an unfortunate aspect of the loris reunion.

Dylan shifts his feet slightly. "Wonder what we'll find waiting for us in Japan?"

"I have no idea," Alek says as he retakes his stance, but the question fills him with excitement rather than uncertainty, confidence rather than anxiety. He feels like he could handle anything, now. He feels as if he's – well, as if he's an archduke, and not just a prince.

"Waiting," Bovril says.

The other loris chimes in with, "No idea."

"_Mr._ Sharp," they say in unison, and giggle.

Dylan scowls and drops his point. "I liked those beasties better when they were still eggs."


	29. OTP

**Note:** 50-word drabble. There's a lot of OTPs goin' on in Behemoth... take your pick. :)

.

.

.

It's happened in bits and pieces, hasn't it?

No precise moment you can put your finger on; rather, an imperceptible evolution of feeling. Slow. Certain. Unstoppable.

All you know is that one morning you awoke, looked about, and realized it was true.

It makes no sense.

But love rarely does.


	30. hephaestion

Note: OMG, 30 chapters! Thank you, all you readers, for leaving so many reviews and just generally being awesome. :)

.

.

.

"Careful, Hephaestion."

Deryn's gaze had followed Alek out of the cabin, as he and Bovril went off to find food suitable for a loris, but now her attention snaps back front and center. Count Volger is smirking at her over the tip of her saber, and she wonders crossly why he bothers insulting her with words she doesn't understand. "What?"

"You don't know who that is," he says, circling around her with slow, measured steps.

Like a shark, scenting prey and closing in. She refuses to move out of her stance, even when he crosses behind her. "Of course you don't. I forget, sometimes, that you haven't the advantage of the education of a boy in His Highness' position."

Her eyes narrow in indignation. What a pretentious bum-rag! Of course, as he's just reminded her, he's the pretentious bum-rag that knows her secret, so she'll have to watch her tongue.

But not too much. "We're not all so lucky to have tutors in our barking palaces, your countship."

Volger comes back into view, arms clasped casually behind his back, clever-boots smirk still very much in place. "You _have_ heard of Alexander the Great?"

She's strongly tempted to say that the only great Alexander she knows is this minute raiding the galley for loris snacks, but Volger doesn't need the ammunition. Instead she settles for, "Aye, maybe once or twice."

"Alexander began as a prince of Macedon," Volger says, and she realizes she's going to have to stand here, arms and shoulders aching, while he lectures her about ancient history. That may be well and good for Alek, with his posh princely ways, but she's an airman. Everything she needs to know is in the _Manual of Aeronautics_, and that she has mostly by heart.

Not for the first time, she entertains the fancy of whacking Count Volger over the head with her fencing saber.

"He became king after his father was assassinated, and he ended as the ruler of an empire stretching from northern Greece to India. And all of that before he was quite thirty-three." Volger pauses in his pacing long enough to say sharply, "Don't drop your point."

She grits her teeth and raises the sword's point. Why is she still subjecting herself to fencing lessons? It can't be for Alek. Only the daftest of creatures would put themselves through this sort of torture to please a boy who won't ever be more than a _friend_.

Volger eyes her critically for a moment, then resumes pacing and lecturing. "Hephaestion was his best friend, eventually becoming his second-in-command. Their friendship was... close. Uncommonly so. They were sometimes described as 'one soul in two bodies'. When Hephaestion died, Alexander could not be consoled. He himself died just eight months later."

Deryn stiffens. Something that feels an awful lot like anger boils beneath her skin. Is he _teasing_ her? Barking spiders, he'd better not.

She demands, "What are you saying?"

He draws his own saber with a smooth, practiced motion and takes up his stance with an effortless precision that makes her feel six sorts of gawky. The tip of his sword is a hair away from hers; the point never wavers. "I'm saying, _Mr._ Sharp, that His Highness gives his absolute trust to a very few people, and somehow you have managed to place yourself at the top of that list."

Defiant, she meets his eyes across the swords, and holds his unblinking stare. A shark indeed, he is. He looks like he'd prefer to see her gutted and filleted.

Softly, deadly, he adds, "So be _careful_, Hephaestion."

Her mind races, trying to decipher everything. Volger – and Dr. Barlow, at that – never come right out and tell you what they sodding mean. A dead perfect matched set, the two of them, always thinking sideways and talking over your head.

Is Volger warning her to watch her step – that she's rivals with a barking _count_ now, over who Alek trusts more? Or is he hinting that maybe her cause isn't complete madness after all? Or is he -

Volger smacks the flat of his saber against hers, knocking it clean out of her hand. She yelps; the sword clatters noisily to the cabin floor.

The count makes a noise of disdain as she rubs at her wrist. "Concentrate. And for God's sake, keep your grip. It's a saber, not a sewing needle."

She waits until he's not looking to stick out her tongue. Pretentious bum-rag.


	31. spectator sport

**Note:** This is one of a pair of ficlets, because I couldn't decide which angle I liked best. :)

.

.

.

They watch Alek and Dylan talk and laugh their way down the corridor, to all appearances the best of friends. Dr. Barlow turns to the man beside her and says drily, "May I assume, then, that you haven't told him?"

Count Volger lifts one shoulder in a fractional shrug. "It seemed unnecessary."

Her eyebrow arches. "Indeed. I would praise you for your charity, Count…"

"If you were less aware of my character?" he says with asperity, and she inclines her head in agreement. Her honesty brings the merest flicker of amusement to his face. "It's useful information, and as such should not be squandered."

"One never knows," she says, "when an appropriate occasion for blackmail might arise."

He gives her his full attention. The flicker is growing into an actual smile, even if it has only reached his eyes. "You persist in making me out to be a villain, Doctor, when I am merely a survivor. Darwinists are said to admire that trait, if I'm not mistaken."

"Indeed," she says, allowing her own mouth to curve upward. She looks again at the children. It's blindingly obvious, now; she will never forgive herself for not noticing independently. "I wonder, though, that he doesn't already know."

"Most people see what they choose," Volger says, following her line of vision. "A failure of perception that afflicts every level of society." He sighs and adds, sotto voce, "Even after so much instruction."

Now she makes no attempt to mask her good humor. "A small consolation, Count," she says, lightly touching his arm. "The truth will out, as ever, and we can expect to have an excellent vantage point when it does."

"Indeed," he says, deliberately echoing. He holds out his arm, and she takes it. "You are rather perspicacious yourself, Doctor."

"A good fabricator must put something of herself into her work," she says primly, and is rewarded with a full smile at last. He is quite handsome when he smiles.

They turn their backs on the children and make their way elsewhere. They haven't gone far when Volger says, "It would have been cruel as well, to deprive him of the security of a good friend when he has so little else to be sure of."

She draws back just enough to look into his face and says lightly, "Careful, sir, or I shall be forced to revise my opinions of your character, and that will play havoc with all of my plans."

"My deepest apologies to your plans," he says, giving her a very correct half-bow, and she laughs.


	32. ab ovo

**Note:** And now for the other angle.

.

.

.

From farther down the corridor, Dr. Barlow watches the perspicacious loris leap nimbly from Aleksandar's shoulder to that of Midshipman Sharp as the two children exchange brief words. Alek continues on towards the engines; Mr. Sharp stays where he is, and the loris stays with him – to all visible evidence, perfectly content to be separated from the prince.

Dr. Barlow makes a note in her observation log and sighs. Her own loris is perching on Tazza's back, much to the thylacine's long-suffering dismay.

"Good afternoon, Doctor," a voice says behind her. She smiles, but is careful to mask it before she turns.

"Good afternoon, Count," she says. "How nice to see you out and about."

"Yes," Count Volger says drily. "I have so many places to go now."

"I'll confess, the only place I want to be at the moment is the London Zoo," she says, closing the observation log and choosing to ignore the thorns in his words. "With my equipment and all of my research to hand."

The count chooses to appear mildly surprised. "I thought you considered your experiment a success."

"_This_ one is," she says, extending her arm to the loris. It scurries up her arm and curls around her neck, making a sound exactly like Tazza does when his stomach is full and his bed is soft. " 'Bovril', on the other hand, needs rather more study, and under properly controlled conditions."

The count glances down at the loris around her neck, then at Bovril, clutching the front of Mr. Sharp's jacket despite the boy's chagrined attempts to relocate it elsewhere on his person. "Forgive my ignorance. Is it not simply defective?"

"No," she says, not fooled by his claims of ignorance: he's a quick study when he so chooses. "And that's precisely what's so frustrating. If it had been damaged _ab ovo_, I would expect to see a wide variety of erratic behaviors. That is not proving to be the case. In several days' worth of observations I've only detected two 'quirks', as it were."

"May I?" Count Volger asks, raising his hand to the level of her shoulder.

"Of course," she says. He reaches out to the loris and rubs behind the small, rounded ears. As he does so, the back of his hand brushes lightly along the edge of her jaw.

"Success," the loris says.

Volger, who does not like to interact with fabricated animals, smiles and withdraws his hand. "Two quirks, you said?"

"Firstly, it should not have bonded with Mr. Sharp," Dr. Barlow says. She lets some of her vexation with the malfunctioning creature show in her voice: "I did allow for additional bonding under certain specific conditions. Your prince and Mr. Sharp are close friends, but the design calls for a degree of intimacy far beyond that."

"_Mr._ Sharp," the loris on her shoulder says, with great satisfaction.

"That would be the second quirk," she says, with a sigh.

"I see." The count smiles again – this time, to himself.

Dr. Barlow is not pleased to see him amused at her expense. She weighs the benefits of making him aware of that and decides against it. _Nothing_, after all, is always a clever thing to say.

Instead, she fixes once more on the problem at hand. "Again, I would expect to see a more widespread pattern of errors. It seems clear that Bovril's fixation on that particular phrase _must _somehow be related to the misplaced bonding…"

Her voice fades, but she's hardly aware of it. The two quirks are significant, and the connection between them lies tantalizingly on the fringes of her understanding. Amorphous and vague yet, she _knows_ it has something to do with the young midshipman…

She stares at the boy without fully seeing him, running through a cerebral version of her observation log. He has secrets, does their Mr. Sharp, and one of them will solve her mystery.

_Something_…

The count jolts her from her thoughts by saying, "I suspect, Doctor, that you will uncover the truth in due time."

"I have no doubt of that," she says – a touch too brusquely. The even more short-tempered _Faster if you would stop interrupting me _remains unspoken. Clever as always. She schools herself and gives Count Volger her most diplomatic smile. "But I can only be boring you, Count, with these details."

He inclines his head. "Not at all. However, I will leave you to your work. If you will excuse me -?"

"Of course," she says.

"Excuse me," the loris says, sitting up attentively on her shoulder.

Volger smiles and reaches out to touch the creature again, this time missing it rather completely. His fingers are callused against her skin, and quite warm, and they linger there for a moment longer than can be attributed to error.

And for a moment, all thoughts of the loris' troubling defects are driven straight from her mind.

That, she is sure, is no mistake.


	33. fighting words

Alek knows they're going to have to leave Vienna the day his daughter comes home with a bloody nose.

He's in his study, answering some correspondence, when he hears a sniffle at the door. He glances up, then looks again, rising from his desk and halfway across the room before he can notice more than _my daughter_ and _blood_.

"Sophie! What happened?"

She sniffs again. Her dress is filthy, her brown hair a mess, and tears are glittering in her eyes, but she lifts her chin defiantly. "I was fighting."

He sits her down in the chair in front of his desk and tips her face back, searching for damage. "Who?"

"F-freidrich," she says, her voice quavering as he gently examines her nose. But she isn't crying: Heaven forbid that his darling little girl cry over something so trivial as getting punched in the face. He pulls out his handkerchief and dabs at the drying blood on her chin.

She adds, "And Werner."

She seems to be all right, and the bleeding has already stopped. He sits back on his heels, giving her a stern look along with his handkerchief. She knows she's not supposed to fight – particularly not with the sons of Vienna's elite. "Sophie."

The defiance evaporates. Her gaze drops to her bruised knuckles, the bloodied handkerchief twisting between them. In a small voice, she says, "And Hans."

"_Sophie._"

His daughter sits up straight again, eight hundred years of Habsburg royalty (and untold generations of stubborn Glaswegians) blazing forth anew. "I had to! They were telling _lies_ about you, Papa. And about Mama!"

He studies her. "What were they saying?"

"They called you a traitor!" she says, fiercely indignant. "And they called Mama – they called Mama a whore! I told them they'd better take it back, but they laughed at me. They _laughed_, Papa!"

Well. Alek suddenly hopes that Sophie got in a few good hits of her own before the fight was over, and he no longer feels like apologizing to the boys' parents. In fact… He cuts a glance at the sabers hanging on the wall, which, unfortunately, are purely for show. "So you fought them."

"Yes." She breaks into a ferocious grin; any trace of contriteness is long gone. "And I won! Three to one, Papa – that's quite difficult, you know."

He stands with a sigh, sticks his head out into the hall, and asks the maid to bring a bowl of water, a washrag, a towel, and some ice. Then he closes the study door.

"Your mother is going to be furious," he says, not adding _with those boys_. That might undermine this lecture.

But Sophie knows her mother, and the corner of her mouth curls up before she quickly adopts the pose of a pious, wounded innocent. "Please don't tell her I ruined my dress, Papa," she says.

Every morning at breakfast, Sophie presents herself with hair curled, ribbons tied, dress pristine, shoes polished. And the next time Alek sees her – be it in five minutes or five hours – she looks like she's been crawling through both a farm and a fuel intake valve. He doesn't know how she does it.

"I don't think it's the dress that she'll object to," he says.

Sophie touches her swollen nose with the handkerchief and can't quite hide her wince. "I just couldn't let them get away with – with saying those things. You understand, don't you, Papa?" Eyes wide and beseeching.

He looks at her. She might, he thinks wryly, have him completely wrapped about her finger, but at least he knows her tricks when he sees them. "I understand perfectly well. Where were your brothers during all of this?"

His daughter sniffs – derisively, this time. "Playing in the garden. With Nanny Liesel."

The maid knocks on the door and curtseys her way in with the requested items. Alek thanks her and dismisses her with an exchange of small, rueful smiles. All the staff are aware of Sophie's proclivities – and, it must be said, merely love her the more for them.

He dips the rag into the water and cleans the last of the blood off of his daughter's face. Then he wraps the ice in the towel and gives it her to hold against her nose. "I think it would be a good idea for you to join them, for the rest of the day. Go put on a clean dress first."

"But Papa –"

"_Now_," he says, bringing all of the authority of his own heritage to bear. "Your mother and I will discuss your punishment later."

"Yes, sir," Sophie says, finally, truly chastised.

"And the next time," he says, taking a seat behind his desk again, "that Friedrich, Werner, or Hans have something to say about your mother, remind them that she's not a bad shot, either."

It's rather the opposite of what he had originally thought to say, but he's pleased by his daughter's proud reaction to the words. _Bella gerant alii_ will only take you so far, after all. Then you have to wage your wars… be them large or small.

"Yes, sir!" Sophie bounces up and out of his study – although not before darting around his desk and giving him a kiss.

Alek finishes his correspondence, then puts the pen down and rests his head in his hands. He _had_ hoped to stay on in Vienna a while longer. Surely, he'd thought, the world had changed enough to allow his family a measure of peace, if not acceptance.

He ought to have known better.

"Deryn is going to kill those boys," he says aloud, and starts making arrangements, as his father once did, to move the household to Konopischt.


	34. ailments

Alek is pathetic when he's ill. Deryn's never met a boy who isn't, but – "I expected more from an archduke."

He glares at her in between sneezes and pitiful moans.

"Aye, just lay about, then," she says, condescending. "Girls never get to – it's washing and mending and off to market, then cooking, cleaning and minding the children all day, even when you're barking miserable."

"I don't need a lecture," he says. Sneezes. "I need soup. And a new handkerchief."

"You've a cold," she says. "Your feet work fine."

And she takes herself to a less contagious part of the house.


	35. in the midnight hour

Deryn comes awake all at once, stomach in knots, heart in her throat, a shout tangled on her tongue. It takes her a moment to sort out that the roaring sound in her ears is just her pulse, and not her da's balloon.

She hates nightmares.

In her dream she had been at the foot of the Tesla cannon again, watching Zaven throw his walker against the awful thing – only it wasn't Zaven, it was her da, and when she'd tried to go help him, Alek had grabbed her arm and told her she couldn't. And then it'd been too late and she'd been on her back in the grass, watching the twisting, burning fabric of the balloon grow small and black against the blue sky.

She lets out an unsteady breath and pushes her fingers through her hair. Presses them to her face. Her hands are shaking, too, and clammy with sweat.

"Dream," she tells herself. "Just a sodding dream."

It takes a minute, though, for her to feel steady again. She knows she won't be getting back to sleep tonight, and she pulls on her jacket and boots so she can walk about the ship looking like a middy and not a little lassie scairt of midnight bogles.

Once in the corridors she finds herself at loose ends: She doesn't really have anywhere to go. _Away_ is a fine direction, but not when what you're running from is inside your own skull.

Her feet, daft things that they are, carry her to Alek's cabin. She tells herself she'll keep walking – no point in both of them being awake in the middle of the night – until she sees a thread of green light beneath his door.

Deryn hesitates a moment, then raps softly on the door before opening it.

Alek is sitting on the floor, his back against the bed, a stack of books and papers on both sides, everything cast in the glow of a wormlamp; Bovril has made a nest of his unused blanket and is curled up snugly.

He looks up from reading as she enters.

"What're you doing still awake?" she asks, incredulous.

He frowns and checks his pocket watch, then swears softly and climbs to his feet. "I didn't realize," he says. "I've been reading."

She picks up one of the books, but it's in German, which still looks like gibberish to her, for all that she can speak it tolerably well. There are charts and figures inside, but nothing worthwhile – no airflow diagrams, no lift ratios, no volume comparisons. "Reading _what?_"

"That one is political philosophy," he says. "Volger suggested it; they're his books, although I suspect he brought them along only for this. It's really quite fascinating."

She wrinkles her nose and gives the book back. "Suddenly I'm barking glad I'm not an archduke."

"So am I," he says, smirking and then breaking into a yawn. "It _is_ late, isn't it? Why are you still awake? You're not standing watch, are you?"

"I couldn't sleep," she says.

She doesn't add anything else, but she doesn't need to; after a moment his eyes fill with understanding, and he nods somberly. "Your father."

Suddenly the nightmare's horror swamps her afresh. It's foolish, because it was only in a dream, but she feels a hot pulse of resentment towards him for holding her back. Keeping her from saving her da.

Just as fast, though, it's gone, and she's simply grateful that she doesn't have to explain any further. "Aye."

"I thought –" He pauses. The next words are tentative: "I thought that you might. After… what happened."

"Aye," she says again, this time perilously soft and girlish. She clears her throat and casts about for a reason she might be in his room, other than a feeble wish he might comfort her. "I was wondering – if I could borrow Bovril."

"Of course," Alek says, clearly surprised by the request. They look at the sleeping loris, clinging to the blanket like a barnacle, and he adds dubiously, "If you can pry it free."

Bovril opens one large, liquid eye as she reaches down to collect it, and makes a drowsy sort of purr. She doesn't pick up the beastie so much as it latches on to her, and soon there's a warm, living weight on her shoulder.

She feels better.

"Dylan," Alek says.

Deryn stops rubbing behind Bovril's ears and looks at her friend – because he is _that_, even if he'll never be anything else.

"For what it's worth," he says, then stops. Tentative. He looks as though he's thinking something through, very carefully. Then he takes a step forward and puts his arms around her in a brief embrace.

Bovril purrs.

"For what it's worth," Alek says quietly, breath stirring her hair, "I'm sorry."

She closes her eyes, but he's already letting go. Still, for a moment all of her nightmares were gone, and she felt like the safest thing in the world.

"For what it's worth," she says, forcing herself to step away, "so am I."

He knows what she means. His eyes go sad, and he looks to his books again, but he nods. "_Träum gut_, Dylan."

"For what it's worth," Bovril murmurs in her ear.

"Hush, beastie," she says, stroking its fur. "G'night, Alek."

She finds she's able to fall back asleep without a squick of trouble whatsoever, and her dreams, when she has them, are just fine.


	36. who are gathered today

**Note:** It's said there are no new ideas – and in this case it's because I cribbed extensively from a very funny _ReBoot_ fic. So much love to "Mainframe's Most Memorable Wedding", which I read way back in the day, and which I'm sure you can still find out there on the internets. :)

.

.

.

Bauer is rather pleased, all things considered, to be back aboard the _Leviathan_. He had enjoyed his time serving aboard the airship – but more to the point, today he's attending a wedding, and weddings are always nice.

The airmen are at their stations, and the bridge has been cleared of everyone but the pilot, Captain Hobbes, the wedding party, and a handful of guests. Bauer counts himself quite lucky to be one of the chosen few. He'd never dreamed, when first approached by _Erzherzog_ Franz Ferdinand (God rest his soul), that protecting the prince would lead to such adventures, such honors.

Captain Hobbes begins the ceremony, and Bauer, despite his best intentions, finds his thoughts wandering. A marriage is a joyous occasion... it's a shame that this one is so scandalous. Apparently the church balked at performing the wedding for that very reason, and thus the shipboard ceremony, with a captain instead of a priest. It makes no sense to Bauer. Yes, it's an unsuitable match, with political and moral objections in abundance, but you don't choose who you fall in love with. You certainly shouldn't be punished for it.

Things like this are why he's glad to be a simple soldier – of course, some soldiers are more simple than others. For instance: _Deryn_, not Dylan; Bauer doesn't think he'll ever get used to that. Still, she looks quite pretty in her dress.

Bauer smiles, remembering what His Majesty had confided as they arrived – "_It would have been easier to persuade the _Leviathan_ itself to wear that dress"_ – and inwardly shakes his head at the world and all those things in it which remain beyond his understanding.

The ceremony concludes with a decorous kiss, and everyone applauds. Beside Bauer, old Klopp surreptitiously wipes at his eyes, then notices Bauer watching and chuckles.

Bauer leans over and whispers, "A day long in coming, eh?"

Klopp makes a noise of agreement. "I didn't think either of them would ever find this happiness - especially not _him_."

"Yes," Bauer says, nodding. "The invitation was a pleasant surprise."

Klopp nods as well, a fond smile on his face. "That it was indeed."

There's to be no formal reception, given the circumstances; the newlyweds merely turn around to receive their guests. Bauer sees no need to push for a preeminent position in the line, and as a consequence is rather towards the end. He smiles politely at the English-speaking guests, whose conversation he can't understand, and talks mostly to Hoffman and Klopp as they move forwards.

Of course, Deryn spoils the formality by shaking their hands like a young man and saying, "Bloody hell, it's good to see the three of you!"

"You look wonderful," Klopp says gallantly, and Bauer and Hoffman echo the sentiment.

She rolls her eyes. "Blame His Crownliness there. I would've rather worn my old full-dress uniform – the lady boffin even said I could – but you know Alek. Everything's starched and proper with him."

"Deryn, you can't be a boy _and_ the maid of honor," says His Imperial and Royal Majesty Aleksandar beside her, half-feigning affront.

She only grins. "And how many emperors stand as best man to their old tutors?"

"My point remains," His Majesty says. Suddenly he's smiling too. "Besides – you do look wonderful."

Deryn wrinkles her nose and turns to Bauer, who is holding up the reception line to witness this chat; Klopp and Hoffman have already moved on. "Well?" she demands. "Go wish them the best!"

Bauer salutes (earning a laugh from her and a long-suffering smile from His Majesty) and goes to give his congratulations to Count Volger and Dr. Barlow.


	37. command

"Midshipman Sharp reporting as ordered, sir," the boy says, snapping a crisp salute.

"At ease, Mr. Sharp," Hobbes says, finishing his entry in the ship's log before returning his attention to the boy standing in front of his desk. Alert and expectant, as usual.

Hobbes likes the midshipman immensely, although of course he tries not to let that color his command decisions. It's exceedingly rare to find Sharp's combination of cleverness, confidence, and competence. That the boy is also diligent and honest, displays brilliant initiative and tenacity, and all of this at only sixteen years of age – well. A captain could wish for more such men.

"I've received a message from Istanbul," he says, glancing at the paper in question, "and shall be making an announcement to the ship in short order. Considering the contents, however, I thought fit to inform you first."

Sharp blinks. "Sir?"

"A Lieutenant Colonel…" he checks the name "…Mustafa Kemal has seized command of the Ottoman military. A member of that Committee you encountered, it seems."

Sharp shifts position slightly, and looks very curious, but says nothing.

"One of Colonel Kemal's first actions was to order the release of airmen Matthews and Spencer. They have been taken aboard a British naval vessel and are now bound for India. Kemal sends along assurances that they were not overly ill-treated while imprisoned – something echoed by the skipper of the _Merrow_."

Hobbes pauses and considers the boy standing before him. "Kemal also adds that Robins was given a proper burial."

"Aye, sir," Sharp says. He blinks again, several times – neither in confusion nor surprise. "Thank you, sir."

_Sensitive._ That's not a word to make a commanding officer jump for joy. It would be of more concern to Hobbes if Sharp wasn't such a damn good midshipman. High marks from the bosun, approval from all of the officers, gets on well with the crew – the perfect middy. Dylan Sharp will go far in the Air Service, occasional lapses into sentiment or not.

And there are worse sins than worrying over the fates of the men in your command.

"You're dismissed, Mr. Sharp," Hobbes says.

The boy salutes and prepares to leave.

"One more thing," Hobbes says abruptly. Sharp pauses mid-motion and turns again at once.

"Sir?"

"No one's first command goes as they expect," Hobbes says, soft and gravely serious. "Count yours as a success, mark your mistakes – and don't make them again."

Mr. Sharp stands a little straighter. "Aye sir."

Captain Hobbes sends his best midshipman on his way, and returns to his work.

.

.

.

**Note: **Mustafa Kemal, in real life, went on to become Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of modern-day Turkey.


	38. model

Alek looks down at the formal suit of clothes in mingled pride and dismay.

Pride, because he's grown since he was fitted for them last year; the seams are tight and the cuffs are just a bit short.

Dismay, because, unbeknownst to Alek, Count Volger brought the blasted things along, and now Alek will be expected to wear them.

"Is this really necessary?" Alek asks his tutor.

"You will not present yourself in public as the Archduke of Austria-Este while wearing a filthy pilot's uniform, or, God forbid, that of a British airman," Volger says firmly. "The dignity of your house must be maintained."

Drat. Alek tries a different approach: "Can't I simply order new clothes in Japan?"

Volger is unmoved. "Inferior workmanship. And how, pray tell, do you intend to pay for them? I seem to remember that all of your father's gold is either lost on a glacier or distributed amongst the spice merchants of Istanbul."

"Those sacrifices kept us both alive," Alek reminds him.

"Indeed. But all choices have consequences – most of them unintended. We shall have to have this altered," Volger says, returning to practical matters.

At Alek's feet, a small voice says, "Consequences."

"Hmm -? _Guten tag_, Bovril," he says, crouching down to scratch the loris' head. "What are you doing wandering about?"

"It's following me," Dylan says from the stateroom's doorway. "Are you… what are _you_ doing?"

"Exercise your imagination," Volger says drily, making Dylan scowl. To Alek, the count says, "Leave that ungodly creature alone before you get its fur all over yourself."

In what is no double a deliberate show of contempt, Bovril waddles over to Volger's boots and proceeds to look adorable. Volger is plainly not amused, but refrains from kicking it across the cabin, a courtesy which Alek appreciates.

"The clothes are in case I have to be an archduke in Tokyo." Alek gestures at himself, standing about like a dressmaker's dummy. "Ridiculous, isn't it?"

Dylan, Alek notices, has a peculiar look on his face and has turned slightly red. "A-aye. Ridiculous."

Now it's Alek's turn to scowl. "I didn't laugh at _your _dress uniform."

"I'm not laughing!" Dylan says, turning redder.

"_Imagination_," Bovril says, then chuckles.

Dylan goes positively scarlet.

Volger harrumphs. "If you must insist on being here, Mr. Sharp, perhaps you could make yourself useful and do a bit of sewing."

The midshipman gives the count a furious glare, announces, "_Do your own barking sewing!_" and storms off.

Alek looks at Bovril and then at Volger. "What was that about?"

"I'm sure I have no idea," Volger says, perfectly inscrutable.

Bovril looks up at the count and says, "Ridiculous."


	39. parallel universe

_Maybe we are together in a parallel universe_

_- from "Destiny Rules" by Fleetwood Mac_

_._

_._

_._

In the spring of 1919, the king of England, flush with victory from the recent conclusion to the war, invites the emperor of Austria-Hungary to London on a state visit.

They've been allies for the better part of two years, ever since Aleksandar came to the throne and promptly removed his country from the war – an unpopular move with his granduncle's government, but certainly appreciated by the starving, battle-weary citizens. Austrian neutrality, to Britain, was well worth a few shipments of grain from India. And now, in the wake of the Versailles treaty, continued Austrian goodwill is worth a few weeks of playing host.

Alek hesitates in accepting: "There's too much for me to do here," he tells Volger.

"Go," Volger says, pragmatic as always. "Germany has gone to hell, Italy is gnawing at our borders, and God knows what the Russians will do once they get themselves sorted. We need to keep Britain as an ally. My advice, Your Majesty, would be to find Princess Mary appealing and open marriage negotiations."

Alek goes.

He does not find Princess Mary appealing.

There's nothing _wrong_ with Mary – she's close in age, pretty, well-mannered, pleasant in her conversation. But he knows straightaway that he's not going to make any overtures for her hand. (Her fondness for the fabricated dog-like animals constantly yipping at her feet has nothing to do with it, or so he tells himself.)

His state visit is otherwise a great success. He goes shooting with the king, attends dinners, receptions, balls, galas. He takes in theater performances, operas, symphonies. He tours the London Zoo and its collection of Darwinist oddities. Everywhere he goes he is unfailingly polite and diplomatic, and everyone bows and treats him with perfect deference.

But the formal events bore him, the creatures unnerve him, and he becomes restless, thinking of the thousand and one things he ought to be doing in Vienna. The reforms he's been championing – the ones his father first developed – need his presence to succeed against the hard-liners.

He begins to resent Britain for keeping him away from home.

He almost doesn't go to the last party, as he'll be leaving at the end of the week and could plausibly plead other business; but Lord Oxenford is a member of Parliament and one of the few Brits who's unabashedly pro-Clanker. It would be poor form indeed to slight the man.

Lord and Lady Oxenford are delighted by the emperor's presence. Alek accepts their gratitude, says complimentary things about their home, and drifts through the crowd of other guests, marking time.

Until.

Someone laughs.

It's a woman's laugh, loud and unselfconscious and cutting through the inane party chatter, and it makes heads turn – Alek's among them.

He's grown since he was fifteen, but he's no taller than his father was, and he can't quite see the woman through the screen of the other guests. People move, and he catches a glimpse of bright blonde hair.

"Who on earth is that?" he asks a nearby society matron.

She fawns and frets all at once. "Oh, Your Majesty, of course you wouldn't have heard… That's a certain _Miss Sharp_. She must have come uninvited; I can't imagine that anyone _here_ would have asked her."

Unseen, Miss Sharp laughs again. Alek finds himself smiling at the sound and stifles the expression. "She sounds very scandalous."

The matron sniffs. "Oh, that she most certainly is, Your Majesty! They say," she adds, dropping her voice, "that she snuck aboard an airship at the start of that dreadful war, and stayed there, disguised as a boy soldier_. Imagine_! Why, it's almost too shocking to comprehend. She ought to be locked away. At the very least disowned by her family."

Alek tries to see Miss Sharp again. "Yes," he says. "Quite shocking. Excuse me, madam."

He makes his way across the room to where he last saw Miss Sharp, who sounds like the most interesting thing he's heard of in ages. She's still there, surrounded by a small circle of gentlemen and ladies listening to her tell a war story.

"-just barking lucky that rope didn't break, or I'd still be swimming home," she concludes, grinning widely, and her male listeners chuckle while the female ones merely look scandalized. Someone notices Alek, and a ripple of attention spreads through the immediate area. Miss Sharp turns to see him.

She's tall for a woman – they're of an equal height – and stands with her back straight and shoulders square. Confident. Her blonde hair is very short, and she would have made, he thinks, rather too pretty a boy to be believed.

Alek gives her a fractional bow. "Please, do not stop on my account."

"All right," Miss Sharp says, and launches into another tale without asking to be introduced or even why everyone is staring, shocked at this breach of etiquette. He's every bit as amazed – does she really not know who he is? Or not care to find out? – but soon becomes caught up in her story.

At first it seems almost fantastical, and he's certain she's exaggerating her involvement in some parts. On the whole, however, her account of the battle of Constantinople sounds remarkably accurate, and when he skeptically presses for details, she supplies them with no evidence of concern that she might be found out for a liar.

The others listeners drift away, but he remains, and soon they are deep into a discussion on the proper use of air power in a land engagement.

He is forgetting his manners – one does not allow one's self to be preoccupied this way; one should continue to circulate throughout the party – but he's too bewildered and amazed to care. A girl who can talk intelligently about military matters!

God's wounds, if she's done half the things she claims… and all while he was trapped in that Swiss castle, or struggling to sit through interminable government meetings. His skepticism begins to give way to something akin to jealousy. What he would give to have lived that life!

Finally she breaks off the conversation to glance around and say, "Blisters, everyone's gawking."

"At me, I'm afraid," he says, cursing himself for attracting the attention. This is the sort of thing that will be gossiped about in parlors across London – and even Vienna, if the news travels well.

She frowns. "Are you that important, then?"

He wants to laugh. "It would appear so."

He expects questions, but what he gets is a conspiratorial, "This party is pure dead boring, isn't it?"

Alek looks at her: Guileless blue eyes, boy-short hair, soldier's stance beneath her dress. "Yes," he admits.

She grins, and suddenly her face is alight with mischief. "I'd imagine you're too important to go skylarking."

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a concerned-looking Lord Oxenford beginning to come their way, and inwardly winces. "I can't leave early, if that's what you mean."

"Aye, it is. But you should come to Wormwood Scrubs tomorrow, first thing. I've a balloon there, and I'll take you aloft, if you like. It's a brilliant way to see London."

Again, not a politic idea. But far, far too intriguing to pass up – and for once in his life, he puts caution to the wind and does what he likes.

"All right," he says.

She sticks her hand out. "Deryn Sharp, by the way."

He finds himself shaking her hand, not kissing it as he would have done with any other lady at this party. He also finds himself saying, "Alek," instead of his proper title. There's something appealing in the idea of remaining anonymous with her... at least for a while.

"Alek," she says, grinning. "Tomorrow, then. And bring a coat – the wind's barking cold up there."

Then she bows – bows! like a man! – and walks away.

Alek stares after her for a moment, then turns to meet Lord Oxenford. "I hope you're still enjoying the party, Your Majesty," the man says, somewhat anxiously. "That – er – that young lady was –"

"An interesting diversion," Alek interrupts, with his own conspiratorial smile. Lord Oxenford looks heartened. Alek puts a friendly hand on the man's shoulder and gently, literally, steers him further away from the subject of Miss Sharp: "I understand that Lord Pirrie is here; perhaps you could introduce us."

He drifts through the rest of the party. Polite. Imperial. Marking time.

He wonders what London will look like from the air.


	40. laid low

Her head is aching.

Not just aching; throbbing. It feels like someone's cut the top off of her skull and danced a hornpipe on her brain.

Deryn cracks an eye open. The light hurts, too, and her poor battered brain realizes she ought to hold very, very still or risk losing her last meal.

Carefully, slowly, she gets her bearings. She's flat on her back in her cabin, bandages itching around her head and one of her forearms. The painful light is only the dim glow of a wormlamp. She stares at it foggily for a long moment, trying to figure how she got here.

"How are you feeling?" a quiet voice asks her. She blinks and turns her head - carefully - to the side. When the vertigo settles, she sees it's Dr. Barlow.

"Terrible," she mumbles, surprised at how exhausted she is, considering she only just woke up. "Alive."

"Everyone else is all right," the lady boffin says. She lays a cool and gentle hand across Deryn's forehead - to soothe or to check her temperature, Deryn's not sure. "Thanks to you."

"What happened?"

"You received a rather nasty blow to the head. You don't remember?"

She thinks as hard as she dares, but there's only a blank, fuzzy black expanse. The aching in her skull is suddenly accompanied by a sick feeling in her stomach. "N-no."

Dr. Barlow looks at her with an expression Deryn's never seen on the lady boffin before: pity. "Perhaps that's for the best."

Her addled, abused brain starts racing faster out of fear. "But everyone's all right? The ship and everyone? That's what you said, right?"

"Yes," Dr. Barlow says. Gentle. Sad. Pitying.

Dr. Barlow is never gentle.

It all slips into place. Dread cuts through the fog with sudden icy clarity, leaving her at once shivering and even more exhausted than before. Deryn knows what's coming next.

She should've pieced it together already, but she can't think straight for more than half a second at a time. She closes her eyes again and tells herself that she won't cry.

The cabin is silent for a long, long minute. She can feel the thrum of the ship's engines vibrating through the bedframe, and the voices of men in the corridor.

Softly, Dr. Barlow asks, "What _is _your name, dear?"

A tear, hot and wet against her skin, slides out from beneath her eyelid despite her best efforts. She opens her eyes and blinks hard to shoo the rest away. "Deryn," she whispers.

Dr. Barlow moves her chair closer and takes Deryn's hand in both of hers. Deryn would tear away if she had the energy - the lady boffin would never comfort a _boy_ like this; and anyway she's not going to shatter if she doesn't have someone to hold her hand.

"There was some question about where you were injured," Dr. Barlow says, or starts to say, because Deryn gives the smallest shake of her head and the doctor falls silent.

"Does everybody know?" she whispers, hating the way her voice wavers.

Quietly, but definitively, she gets the answer: "Yes."

"I suppose I'm well and truly stuffed, then," she says, summoning up a flicker of a smile that must be terribly unconvincing, judging from the lady boffin's face.

"I'm sorry," Dr. Barlow says. "I argued quite strongly on your behalf with Captain Hobbes, once we learned. But he says the rules are clear."

"Aye," she says. There are a million questions she ought to be asking (_will I be tried? are they going to see me home, or dump me in the next port? what'll become of Jaspert?_), but it seems like too much work, just at the present. She settles for echoing herself: "Aye, they are."

"Now that you're awake, I'm afraid I must notify the captain. He has questions for you – a great many, and none of them friendly. As a girl," Dr. Barlow adds, with a touch of her usual smug cleverness, "you shall be in need of a lady to sit with you during the interview. Of course I volunteered."

It's a small kindness. Too small to make any real difference. But it's one less worry for Deryn, who is sinking back into an exhausted fog. "Thank you."

"I could do no less for the _Leviathan's_ finest midshipman." Dr. Barlow releases her hand and stands in a rustle of skirts - deafening, to Deryn's cracked skull. She puts her own hand on her forehead in an effort to stave off the nausea.

"Deryn," Dr. Barlow says softly from the door. "Aleksandar has been... anxious to see you, as well. And it may take me some time to fetch Captain Hobbes. Are you able to speak with him now?"

Alek.

Shame and need war within her muddled thoughts and her aching heart. Another freshet of tears threatens, and she moves the hand on her forehead to cover her eyes.

_Coward_, she says to herself.

"No," she says to Dr. Barlow. "No, I'm not."

The lady boffin says, "I understand," and then she's gone, leaving Deryn all alone.

Crying, as it turns out, makes her head feel even worse.


	41. wartime gown

**Note:** I went all _Mulan_ in the last ficlet (I've seen that movie about 40 times, by the way - no joke), so I thought... let's keep the theme going! :)

.

.

.

_"…I take off my wartime gown  
__And put on my old-time clothes."_

_- from the _Ballad of Mulan

.

.

.

Arriving home is a mad swirl: her ma and the aunties and Jaspert and half the neighborhood watching, not to mention Alek and his people. Her ma catches Deryn up in a fierce hug, pressing her fingers to her boy-short hair to hold her closer.

Deryn hisses, "Don't tell him, Ma, he doesn't know! Keep him down here!"

"What?" her ma says, but Deryn is already tearing away and running up the stairs to her room. Her heart is pounding, and maybe this is a bad plan – no, for certain this is a bad plan. Too late now.

Behind her closed door she strips off her boys' clothes. She takes a moment to fold them neatly and set them aside; they've served her well. Then she pulls on her girls' skivvies and over that, her Sunday best. The white blouse with the bits of lace and fine buttons; the blue skirt, nearly the same color as her eyes; the black boots, polished and dainty.

She's just doing up her boots when the door opens. It's her ma.

Her first thought is panic – for Alek. "Ma! You didn't leave him with the aunties -!"

"Your aunties are too busy cooing over that wee beastie he brought. Jaspert's showing him round the garden," her ma says. She shuts the door again and stands before it, tears filling up her eyes. "Oh, Deryn…"

"Ma," she says, fighting back her own tears, because she _did_ miss her ma, and her home, and even her aunties.

Her ma flutters a hand, dispelling the mood, and moves on to other matters. "That lad's the archduke's son, isn't he? The one everyone's been on about. The newspapers said he might even become _emperor_!"

"Aye, but he's… he's just Alek," Deryn says, looking at the tips of her boots.

Her ma makes the _hmph_ noise that means she hasn't been fooled. "Well, my girl, let's see what we can do with your poor hair before you go down to see your Alek."

There's nothing to be done for her poor hair, it turns out, so her ma ties a neat kerchief around it – white, with tiny blue flowers and birds embroidered all along the edge. It hangs to her shoulders.

Deryn stares at herself in the mirror. It's startling, how much the illusion of longer hair softens her. Before, she looked like Dylan in a dress; now she looks properly feminine. No one could mistake her for a boy _now_.

"All right," she says. Her heart is pounding again.

"Wait," her ma says, and goes and fetches something. Face paint. She dabs a bit of pink on Deryn's cheeks and lips. Nothing garish. Just a hint.

"War paint," her ma says, with a crooked smile, when Deryn gawks. "_Now_ you're done."

She kisses her ma, then runs down the stairs in a great clatter, slowing as she comes to the back door. The garden isn't so big that Jaspert can have had much to show Alek – and indeed, it looks like Alek is being bored to death by a long retelling of that time when their auntie's fat cat managed to climb over the wall to the neighbor's.

She shakes out her skirt and runs nervous fingers over the kerchief. _This was a daft idea_, she thinks; _you should've just **told him**!_

But she steps out into the garden anyway, knuckles white around a fistful of skirt.

Jaspert sees her first, grins, and interrupts himself to say, "And you've already met my sister Deryn."

Alek turns.

His eyes widen.

She holds her breath.

He smiles.

And then he says, "It's about time."


	42. tis the season

**Note:** Well, this turned out to be about six thousand times more sugary than I intended. But hey! – Christmas! 'Tis the season to rot your teeth. :)

.

.

.

**I. 1914**

He's found a quiet corner alone, where he doesn't have to listen to people singing, laughing, exchanging toasts, wishing each other well. He puts his eyes on the stars instead. They're glittering and hard and impossibly distant tonight, small against that black sky.

He doesn't realize how cold he is, how lonely he is, until her warm hand slips into his.

She looks at him with sympathy, not pity; a fine and subtle distinction, but it makes all the difference.

"The second year's easier," she says, soft.

He says nothing. Holds her hand tightly. Chooses to believe it.

.

.

**II. 1918**

Someone forgot to hang mistletoe. It's all right; at this point, the two of them hardly need the excuse.

Although, she's delighted to discover, there _are_ certain other uses for doorways.

.

.

**III. 1922**

She finds him in the heart of the madness and hangs back for a moment, watching, trying not to be smug.

He's talking to her ma, plate of food in one hand, joggling baby Sophie against his shoulder with the other – Sophie who has one fat fist crammed into her mouth, and is happily drooling all over his shoulder – while at the same time being clutched about the knees by a very determined wee nephew.

But that's not what makes her feel like she's won some sort of victory.

It's that he's smiling.

Christmas miracle, she decides, and steps in to take their daughter.

.

.

**IV. 1926**

After a full day of excitement and gifts and some (it must be said) very boring grown-up occasions, the children are finally asleep. He's halfway there himself – and being helped along by the warm, drowsy weight against him. "You were right," he murmurs into her hair.

" 'Course I was," she mumbles, yawning. "About what, mm?"

"Everything," he says softly. He pulls her closer, just the two of them in the darkness, and lets the peace settle. "Merry Christmas, Deryn."

"_Frohe Weihnachten_, Alek," she whispers, both a benediction and an order.

Her fingers weave through his.

He holds on tightly.


	43. vamos a bailar

**Note:** The title's from a song by the Gipsy Kings. Love 'em! :)

.

.

.

"I know quite a few dances," Alek says, indignant. "I had a tutor –"

Dylan rolls his eyes. "Aye, you had a million tutors, but standing still for an hour isn't dancing any more than it's fencing."

"Form is important."

"Not if it stops you from having _fun_."

Alek finds himself agreeing. He hides it with impatience: "Just show me."

Dylan sighs, but concedes. "You can do the boy's part, and I'll do the girl's."

"Why are you the girl?"

His friend coughs and colors slightly. "D_'you _want to be the barking girl? Here, mind the steps."

And Alek does.


	44. a note to follow so

**Note:** Somewhere during the chorus of "Do-Re-Mi" I got the urge to write this. Sorry. It's a catchy song. :)

.

.

.

Alek has never been one for the cinema, but after watching his granddaughters swoon around the house for the better part of a week, singing on and on about edelweiss and brown paper packages tied up with string, he decides he has to see the source of all this fuss.

The girls are thrilled; they invite their friends and chatter merrily all the way to the cinema. His daughter, also in attendance, tells him that she's just glad to see him getting out of the house – "but I do think you'll like it, Papa."

He does like the film, in fact. He's enchanted from the first opening vistas: the mountains and lakes, forests and hills, the picture-perfect little towns... It's unmistakably _home_, and he would love it for that alone. But the story is quite enjoyable, too – although, towards the end, it raises some unhappy memories he'd rather have left buried.

Edelweiss, indeed.

On the way home the girls alternatively giggle over and bemoan the traitorous young soldier. Alek watches them with a fond eye, still nursing his melancholy. Of course his daughter notices.

"I'm fine, my dear," he tells her when she asks. "Just sentiment."

She smiles. "I know it's only a story, but - was it anything like that for you?"

"No," he says, smiling back. For one thing, he met his version of Maria _after_ he fled Austria, not before. He doesn't say that. What he says is, "There was much less singing, as I recall. The acoustics inside a Stormwalker are really very poor."

His daughter laughs.


	45. reshuffled

**Note:** When I sat down to do another shuffle thingee, I decided to go with whoever had the most songs on my iTunes, until I realized that wouldn't work. (76 songs by Bear McCreary, 75 of them instrumental.) Second place? Over sixty 1-minute songs from that most purely 1980s of cartoons: _Jem and the Holograms._ *forehead slap* I swear, I had no idea!

I went with it, although I stopped at 5 this time, because it is _hard _to write a viable drabble in 58 seconds.

Anyway. The show's music is still fun, and the videos are a hoot, so if you've got a minute, go find 'em on YouTube. :)

.

.

.

**1. "It Depends On The Mood I'm In"**

Deryn looks over the contents of her wardrobe carefully.

Should she wear the nice linen dress, the pretty blue muslin dress… or the trousers?

"What do you think?" she asks Alek.

"I suppose that depends," he says, "on how many people you want to outrage today."

She looks back at her choices.

"Trousers," she decides.

.

.

.

**2. "Only The Beginning"**

Deryn glances down at her feet, then out at the wide horizon. The war's over, they've won, and she's bound for home… and so is Alek. After everything they've been through together – blisters, it's more than most people experience in a lifetime. Daft as she is, though, she can't help but want more.

She holds out her hand to shake farewell, saying sadly, "I suppose this is the end, then."

Alek takes her hand, but for once there's no sadness in his eyes. He smiles. "I disagree."

.

.

.

**3. "Believe In Yourself"**

"There's a barking good moral to this story, you know."

"It takes a real woman to wear trousers?"

"No, _Dummkopf_!"

"Ah, well. I'm afraid I don't know what it could be, then."

.

.

.

**4. "Jealousy"**

He doesn't realize just how much trouble he's in until he watches her laugh at another man's joke.

The bitter fire that springs up - out of nowhere it seems - takes him completely by surprise, but the longer he watches, the more he's inclined to give in to it.

He wonders if perhaps he could get away with challenging the idiot to a duel.

.

.

.

**5. "Who Is He Kissing?"**

She breaks off the kiss and stares at him.

"What?" he asks, breathing hard. "What, Deryn?"

She doesn't know whether to be horrified or to laugh. Perhaps both, all at once. "Aye, good, you remember who I am."

He pushes a hand through his hair and looks completely confused. "What are you talking about?"

"You just called me _Dylan_, that's what!"


	46. cross my palm

**Note:** The term "Gypsy" is capitalized when referring to members of that specific ethnic group, although these days it's more correct to use "Romani". [/removes teacher hat]

.

.

.

"What's that?" Alek asks, nodding towards a rather dark and mysterious shopfront whose name is written in a script he doesn't recognize. They're on their way to meet with a dealer of mechanikal parts, and passing through an area of Istanbul Alek hasn't yet seen… not that there's any shortage of those. Nor any shortage of dark and mysterious shopfronts, either, come to think of it.

Lilit looks, then wrinkles her nose. "Just a fortuneteller. That one supposedly reads your stars."

Dylan says, "I had my palm read by a Gypsy woman once, at a fair back home in Glasgow. My da took me; Ma was furious."

Intrigued, Alek asks, "What did she say?"

"My ma?"

"The Gypsy, _Dummkopf_."

Dylan shrugs. "It was all a lot of blether, really."

"Of course it was, but you have to tell us about it now, Dylan," Lilit says. "Otherwise you shouldn't have brought it up at all."

Dylan waves her off. "Aye, fine. She said I'd have a long life –"

Lilit is not impressed. "Oh, they always say that."

"- and lots of bonny children –"

"That, too!"

"- and I'd go traveling to all sorts of far-off places."

"_That _seems rather accurate," Alek says.

His friend snorts. "I had just been talking with Da about flying around the world."

Lilit says, "Exactly. Fortunetellers are a waste of money. And _we're_ wasting time that we don't have." She increases her pace, and when Alek would have increased his in order to keep up, he notices that Dylan has actually slowed down.

"Come to think of it - there was one bit," Dylan says, with a thoughtful frown, "that may have been right."

"What is that?" Alek asks.

"She said I'd meet a –" The other boy breaks off, interrupted perhaps by the black-clad, impatient form of Lilit, swooping down on them and scolding.

"Are you both _trying_ to get lost? Stay close."

Prodded and herded along, Alek forgets to ask Dylan to finish his sentence.

.

.

.

Years later, he happens to think of it, and, out of idle curiosity, asks again.

Deryn's forehead wrinkles as she tries to remember. "Oh, that's right - she said I'd fall madly in love with a tall, dark, and handsome man."

"Hmm," Alek says, wondering, with some amusement, how on earth she would've framed that answer in the autumn of 1914. "Uncannily correct."

"I thought so." Mischief twinkling, she lifts herself on tiptoe to look over the top of his head, then drops flat on her heels so they're eye-to-eye again. "Two out of three's not bad for a carnival Gypsy, aye?"


	47. hasn't got a clue

**Note:** First time I've set out to do a 100-word drabble and failed. Oh well... I guess it's longer because it's supposed to be. :)

.

.

.

Volger insists on seeing shadows everywhere.

"...more important than ever to moderate your behavior. A contender for the imperial crown – particularly one with all of your disadvantages – must be above reproach in every respect possible. This includes your choice of friends..."

Alek listens (heaven help him if he doesn't) but thinks the count's admonitions are ridiculous. There is nothing wrong with his choice of friends. Perhaps Dylan isn't the most conventional companion for a young archduke, but the other boy has proven his loyalty many times over. Alek sees no reason to cut Dylan off now just because Volger has become convinced that the midshipman is somehow toxic to his chances at the Austrian throne.

"...a decidedly bad influence, Your Highness, although it may pain you to hear that. I think it would be best for you to limit your time with her as much as possible in the future. I am sure, if you consider the matter carefully, you will find yourself agreeing with me."

"Yes, of course I will consider it," Alek says, trying to get this lecture over with.

And then the words begin to sink in.

"Volger," he asks slowly, "did you say '_her_'?"


	48. all the lonely people

Alek plays his part in the funeral, says the right things, acts appropriately mournful, but can't quite manage to forget that the old man in the coffin is the one who caused his family so much pain.

Now Franz Joseph is dead, and Aleksandar Ferdinand will be emperor.

He says the right words. He doesn't believe them. It's all too surreal: that the man is gone, that the work of securing the throne is finally over, that he will leave here and return to preparing for his coronation.

Surreptitiously, he looks for a friendly face among the sea of black-clad mourners. Volger is nearby, but that hardly makes a difference. He scans further. The flicker of bright yellow hair is easy to spot, even as far back as propriety and protocol dictate that she stand. Deryn meets his eyes and he feels worlds better.

It's not until long after the funeral services have concluded, and he's trudged through the ceaseless rounds of political glad-handing (that intricate dance of reciprocal, empty politeness and promises) that he's able to go to her. Volger trails behind with his customary air of disapproval; as is also become customary, Alek ignores it.

To his surprise, Deryn's amongst a small crowd of people, all of them affiliated with Archduchess Marie Valerie. That's good; she hasn't been much welcomed in Vienna, particularly by Alek's relatives.

Something Alek will have to change, now that he's able.

As Alek approaches, Deryn is just making her farewells to a stout, matronly woman. Upon closer inspection, Alek recognizes her, although he's never met her in person - and he won't today, either; the woman gives him a graceful bow and a sad smile before she's gathered up by Valerie's people.

Alek offers his arm to Deryn, who takes it, and they proceed homeward. Even though he's intensely curious, he determines not to ask: it's none of his concern, after all.

But Volger has no such compunction. The count at least waits until they're well on their way before he asks, "Why were you talking to Katharina Schratt?"

Deryn looks at Volger askance. "Because in Glasgow, we reckon it good manners to answer someone who's talking to us. She seemed nice enough, and one of the archduchess' ladies introduced us. Was I supposed to ignore her?"

"No," Alek says, thinking of Deryn's abysmal standing in Viennese society. Her reputation can't possibly get any worse, and besides - "Valerie has welcomed her with open arms; that should be good enough for anyone."

Volger is not mollified. "What were you talking about?" he demands.

"This and that," she says, shrugging with a shade too much nonchalance. Alek's certain she's being vague only to torment the count, but he has to check.

"You do know," Alek says, "that Katharina Schratt is – was – my granduncle's mistress?"

She blinks. "Aye, that explains a few things – particularly that one thing."

"You didn't know," Volger says, managing to make three words sound like the ultimate in derision.

"I'm learning fast as I can," she retorts, "but no one bothered to tell me about barking _mistresses_!"

Alek gives Volger a look and lays a hand on Deryn's arm to stop the bickering – although sometimes he thinks he's the only one who doesn't enjoy it.

"What one thing does it explain?" Alek asks.

Deryn adjusts his grip so that she's holding his hand. "She said an emperor always has admirers, when what he really needs is a friend."

"Bah," Volger says, succinct in his scorn.

But Alek is struck by the sad wisdom of it.

He thinks, albeit unwillingly, of that bitter old man they laid to rest today: empire crumbling, wife murdered, son a suicide, and the heir to his crown the only child of a man he loathed.

And the late emperor's one true friend, Katharina Schratt – who had loved him faithfully, and been loved by him, for thirty-three years – was not with him when he died, because Franz Joseph would never deign to consider making a common-born mistress an imperial wife.

There but for the grace of God and Deryn Sharp might have gone Aleksandar Ferdinand.

"Amen," he says, and kisses her hand where he holds it in his own.

.

.

.

**Note:** Katharina (an actress) was sometimes called "the uncrowned empress of Austria". She was, by all accounts, a kind and caring lady with no political aspirations whatsoever. But _thirty-three years_, people! That's just ridiculous.

Empress Elisabeth was assassinated in 1898; Crown Prince Rudolf killed himself - and _his_ mistress - in 1889.


	49. love story

**Note:** I realized about two minutes ago that nowhere in this thing do I have a disclaimer. On the theory of _better late than never_...

**Disclaimer haiku:**  
Darwinists, Clankers  
Not mine - but I wish they were  
(Thus we have this fic)

.

.

.

"Mama," her middle child says one morning, "how do you know if you love someone?"

Deryn looks at Max. Red-brown hair, fine-boned, pale and serious – an eight-year-old miniature of his father. She's forever trying to get him outside to play in the sunlight, but he's a born dreamer: it's books and ideas he wants to explore, not the wide and dangerous world. This sort of question is just like him.

"Well," she says, "I suppose it's different for everyone. Is there someone you like, then?"

"No," he says, too quickly, ears turning pink. "That is – I don't know. No."

"Ah," she says, carefully not laughing or even smiling. "Well, I'll tell you - the first time I thought I was in love, I must have been about your age. Ian MacTavish. He lived on my street and had the bonniest green eyes… Even gave me a flower once. But they moved away after his granny died."

Max is listening intently. "Do girls like to get flowers?"

She wonders who it is that's caught his eye. Hopefully not one of Sophie's friends. A girl that age isn't going to be kind when a little brother comes pestering. "Most do. But if she might like something different, you should try to find out, aye?"

He thinks over that; she can practically see him taking notes in his mind. Then he catches himself.

"I didn't mean – _I_ don't need to know," he says. His ears get redder. "It was just a general sort of question."

"Oh, I see," she says. Her mouth twitches, and she fights it down.

He clears his throat. "But you weren't _really_ in love with – with Ian."

"No," she agrees. "I liked him well enough, but it was just playing at anything more. Now, when I was – oh, twelve or thirteen, I had my mind made up I was going to marry one of your uncle's friends. Jamie Duncan, that was his name. He was brilliant at rugby – he was brilliant at everything, I thought. Or I did until he told me girls were only good for cooking and minding house."

"That's just silly," Max says, full of scorn.

"Aye, that's what I told him." Along with a solid kick to the shins that'd left the bastard limping for nearly two weeks and wary of her forever after, much to Jaspert's amusement. "That's not love, either, if you have to change who you are, or if the other person wants you to."

"Papa didn't want you to change," he says, as if this is the solemn moral of the story.

She almost laughs; she almost says, _If you only knew_. Instead she says, "No, your da and I get on fine just the way we are."

He looks pleased by the answer, at least until he remembers his original question: "But how did you _know_ you loved him?"

She casts an eye at the clock, then ruffles his hair and presses a kiss to his forehead. "That, Maximilian Ferdinand, is a very long story, and you're going to be late for your fencing lesson as is. Another time."

He sighs, disgruntled, finger-combing his hair straight again. "Fencing is so _tiresome_."

"Aye, well, it's important to your father, so off you go." She pretends to give her son a playful swat, making him giggle and dart away – a little boy at last, and not a tiny adult.

Once he's safely gone, she puts her head down and laughs until her ribs ache.

Fondly, she thinks that it's too bad Max didn't ask how she knew she loved_ him_. That one is dead easy.


	50. camera shy

**Note:** And here we are at the big 5-0! A huge and heartfelt thank you to everyone who's ever reviewed – you're the reason I've kept going. :)

.

.

.

"This story's not bad," Deryn says, looking up from the newspaper. The paper's been on a proper journey, according to Alek: first to Captain Hobbes, then Dr. Barlow, then Count Volger, and now the two of them. And it went all the way from New York City to London, before that. At this rate it'll get around the world in no time.

"It makes the Germans sound pure dead evil," she continues, "and it doesn't seem like you knew anything about the Committee or the Tesla cannon at all. And now half the world'll think you're still in Istanbul."

"Not the half that matters," Alek says. He doesn't seem nearly as pleased about Eddie Malone's story as he ought to be. "The Germans will know - or suspect, at least - that I've stayed with you."

She puts her attention on the paper again, trying to hide the little glow in her heart. Of course he didn't mean _you_ as in _her_; he meant _you _as in the crew of the _Leviathan_, or Darwinists in general. But try telling that to her daft body.

"The photograph came out nice," she says, holding up the paper a bit higher so the light hits it better. She remembers Malone posing Alek, wanting him to look both like a fugitive and a prince all at once. She'd like to give it a try herself, sketch him as properly Alek and not as a character in some barking _story_ - but that's a request she doesn't dare make.

He takes the paper from her, frowning at the photo. "I've never had one taken before. Have you?"

"Aye, they did me when I joined up." And it had come out looking like Dylan, not Deryn, for which she was very grateful.

Alek's still unhappy about something. "Dylan..." he says slowly, hesitating, fidgeting with the newspaper. Finally, he says it: "Are my ears really that large?"

She laughs. "_That's_ what's got your knickers in a twist? No, you ninny, your ears are fine."

He makes a _hmph_ noise, but she's dead serious. She's a bit biased, true. Still, right this moment, she can't think of anyone who has nicer ears.

"I find photography very disagreeable," he says, folding the paper so that the photo is hidden.

She feels almost exactly the same (a camera's no substitute for a real artist); tweaking his nose, however, is much better fun. "Well, you'd better get used to it, your archdukeness, because everyone's going to want your picture. _Especially_ if – well, you know."

He frowns some more. "I know. Perhaps I can ban photographers from all my public appearances."

"Aye, good luck with that," she says, rolling her eyes and remembering pushy, sneaky Eddie Malone. "You'd do better just to stay inside your barking castle all day."

"I suppose I could do that," he says thoughtfully. For a moment she's almost fooled - and then she sees the corner of his mouth twitch into a smile before he swiftly resumes a serious expression.

"Or you could put a bag over your head. Wear it everywhere," she suggests, keeping down her own smile. Alek in a playful mood is even more adorable than usual, but now's no time for goggling.

He pretends to mull that over. Then he nods, decisive-like, sticks out his hand, and says, "I believe that will work excellently. Thank you, Dylan, for your ingenious solution."

"Oh, aye, anytime," she says, and they shake on it.


	51. cinco cosas

**Note: **I'm hard at work on all of the fantastic requests that you lovely people sent me, never fear! In the meantime...

Scott Westerfeld said in an interview that the _Leviathan_ will be visiting Mexico in Goliath. (I'm pretty sure it's not going to be like this.) According to my book of historical slang, "sparrow" is an authentic 19th-century term; on the other hand, I don't know if the US Navy had a formal shore patrol in WWI, but I thought it was funny, so they do here. Finally, special thanks to my New Year's Eve friends (all of legal drinking age, I might add) for the hilarious tequila stories.

.

.

.

**Five Things Deryn Learns On Shore Leave**

.

.

.

**I. The loris does not, actually, want to come along.**

Of course, Bovril insists that it does – clambers up her arm and digs its little claws into the shoulder of her jacket and refuses to be pried off no matter how hard she, and then Alek, tries.

"Shore leave," it says, eyes bright, repeating its new favorite words. "Mexico."

Deryn thinks about for a few minutes, then gives a mental shrug. Maybe the beastie is feeling just as cooped up as everyone else; crossing the Pacific had been barking _boring_, and nighttime Tijuana looks (and sounds, and smells) awfully inviting from the airfield where they're moored. She, Alek, and Newkirk are all escaping, despite being strictly ordered to stay on board. Why shouldn't Bovril want the same?

"All right," she tells it. "But don't go blethering on and scaring the locals."

"It was quite well-behaved whenever we went out in Istanbul," Alek says to her, as if they're discussing a child.

Newkirk has a different opinion: "You can't bring that thing with us!" he exclaims.

"Shhh! D'you want to _sneak_ out or not?" Deryn demands, and her fellow middy subsides into grumbles.

They make it all the way to the ground, past the guards (who look like they'd rather be in the city as well), and have just set foot in the streets proper, when some very drunk American sailors reel over to them.

"How much for the monkey?" one of them asks, to the raucous laughter of the others.

Deryn reckons their breath is a fire hazard. She takes a step back, wincing.

"It's not a monkey, it's a loris," Alek says, indignant, unaware that Deryn is fighting the strong urge to smack him for drawing more attention to themselves.

More laughter. "What the hell is a _looooris_?" the sailor asks, then belches. "Here, loris, loris, loris!" He makes a grab for Bovril, who positively squawks in fright and ducks behind Deryn's back, claws threatening to tear her jacket.

"You don't sound like a Brit," one of the other sailors says to Alek, squinting through a drunken haze.

"Aye, he's – er – he's Canadian," Deryn says, grabbing for Newkirk and Alek both and hustling them away, calling over her shoulder, "Enjoy your shore leave, men!"

As soon as they're around a corner and safely out of range of the American sailors, Newkirk says, "I told you bringing that thing was a bad idea!"

"Bad idea. _Leviathan_," Bovril says, sounding rattled. "Bad idea."

Which is why Deryn ends up sneaking back aboard the ship with a loris, and then back off again without one, while Newkirk and Alek wait.

.

.

.

**II. Mix British airmen with American sailors, add alcohol and pretty girls, and there's going to be a fight.**

It's just coincidence that there's an American Navy ship in port tonight. But what it means is that the streets are full of sailors as well as airmen, and all of them are looking for exactly the same things.

There are plenty of places to drink, and plenty of dark-haired, dark-eyed working girls just waiting for arms to hang on, but you'd never know it. The _Leviathan_'s crew aren't about to take any guff from any barking _sailors_, either, especially not Americans.

"Oi, shut your gob, Yank!" a rigger shouts, audible above the din of drunken conversation and lively music.

"Lobster bastard!" an American voice shouts back, to a scattering of supportive calls of "Attaboy, Johnny!"

"Perhaps we should leave," Alek says, sounding uneasy. They've found a table in the back of this particular pub, where they can sit and gawk at everything and drink some very bad, watered-down beer. (Alek, citing his refined Austrian tastes, took one sip and refused any more.)

Newkirk shrugs and says, "Can't be worse than a pub fight back home." Clearly, he's not worried, but that might be because his eyes have been glued to every sparrow that wanders by, hips swaying and colorful blouses pulled down to show off bare shoulders.

Newkirk likes Tijuana.

Deryn is not so sure. It beats sitting aboard the ship, but she could think of better things to be doing. For example, watching a pub fight sounds perfectly daft.

Johnny and the rigger start pushing and shoving; a couple of sparrows try to get in between them and, using only twining arms, languid eyes, and coquettish voices, break up the fight before it properly starts. They're not successful.

Glass shatters, and then everyone is shouting. Fists are thrown, tables are overturned, and Deryn suddenly realizes two things.

First: His Highness the Archduke of Austria-Este probably shouldn't be in the middle of a pub brawl.

Second: Count Volger will kill her if he is.

"Let's go," she announces, knocking her chair over in her hurry to stand. Alek is right with her, but Newkirk is busy watching the fight, eyes alight, almost shadowboxing in his eagerness to join in.

"We can't leave!" Newkirk says. "We ought to help our crewmate – er, whatever his name is."

Deryn rolls her eyes. "Fine, then, I'll just explain to Mr. Rigby why –"

Just then a bottle whistles past Newkirk's head and crashes into the wall behind him, where it explodes into a wet splotch and a million splintered pieces of glass.

"Right, time to go," he says.

Back on the street, Deryn buys herself and the boys a bit of something from a vendor. It's greasy, spicy, and delicious - though compared to Air Service food, anything would taste lovely. They eat it and watch as the Navy shore patrol wades in and hauls away everyone dumb enough to still be inside and fighting, including American Johnny and their crewmate.

"Bad luck," she says.

"Aye," Newkirk says. "Sodding Navy."

"Indeed." Alek brushes off his hands. "So, then. What shall we do next?"

.

.

.

**III. She is not ready for tequila.**

Deryn was expecting something similar to the rum that the other middies used to pass around – not that she'd snuck drinks as often as the rest of them, she was minding her secret; but _not_ drinking, at all, would've been like waving a flag. Especially to that bum-rag Fitzroy.

At any rate, she thought tequila would be like that. Or the brandy she'd filched in Istanbul. Maybe a bit stronger.

It burns; she gags; and the only thing that keeps her from spitting it out is that she just made fun of Newkirk for doing the same.

She swallows the tequila down, but gasps and coughs as it sets her innards on fire. Alek helpfully pounds her on the back, which doesn't help at all.

"I'm not choking, _Dummkopf_," she says hoarsely, pushing him away. She takes several deep breaths, trying to stop her eyes from watering. "Blisters! That stuff's barking terrible."

"Really?" Alek says, frowning down at the finger's worth left in her glass. He picks up the glass and gives the liquid a sniff. "It can't be _that_ bad – everyone's drinking it."

"It's that bad," Deryn and Newkirk say together.

When Alek looks like he's tempted to try it regardless, she does him a favor and dumps the contents of the glass onto the floor.

"Trust me, aye?" she says. "I'm Scottish. If it's too strong for me, it's too strong for you."

"You're probably right," Alek says, thoughtful.

Newkirk is nodding and working his jaw experimentally. "Another sip and I think I wouldn't be able to feel my tongue."

"In that case, then," Deryn says, "maybe you should have another whole glass."

.

.

.

**IV. No one should have to see Newkirk dancing.**

Deryn would blame the tequila, but Newkirk barely tasted it.

She groans and buries her face in her hands. "Tell me when he's done thrashing about like a mammothine in summer."

Alek says, in a tone of horrified awe, "I don't think I've ever seen someone dance like that."

"Can you even call it dancing?" She peeks through her fingers and immediately wishes she hadn't. "Barking spiders. He's a disgrace to the Air Service!"

Luckily, they aren't the only ones to think so. The poor sparrow who's been trapped into dancing with him manages to distract him with a few well-timed sways of her hips and a bit of whispering into his ear. Stunned, Newkirk allows her to drag him to a table.

"Thank goodness," Alek says. "That was painful."

"Aye. No more drinks for him," Deryn says. "Now, come on. We have to convince the poor sod that he's not in love, or 'painful' won't be the word for it."

Still. At least he's not dancing anymore.

.

.

.

**V. Ladies of the night are difficult to dissuade.**

It's funny, the first time a sparrow comes up to Alek – mostly because Alek is plainly scandalized.

"You dance with me, _chico_," the girl says to him, all fluttering eyelashes and sly smiles. Her accent is thick, but the English is perfectly understandable, and her body language, is, of course, universal.

"N-no, thank you," Alek stammers, going bright red, while Deryn tries not to fall over with laughter. She has a sudden sympathy for Clanker chippies; it must be rough, working a trade with all your customers stumbling and embarrassed about the biology involved.

The sparrow clicks her tongue and sashays closer, running a hand across Alek's shoulders and ruffling his hair, leaning forward to put her charms on prominent display. "Yes! One dance, maybe more. We have fun, _chico_, I promise."

Deryn finds it less amusing now that the girl's got her barking hands all over him.

"I – I really must refuse," Alek says, positively scarlet, trying to get her off and away. Deryn reckons she'll give it five more seconds before she steps in to make the point more firmly. Perhaps with a punch to the sparrow's face.

"_I'll_ dance with you," Newkirk says eagerly.

The sparrow looks at Newkirk, flicking her eyes up and down, from his toes to his hair. "_Lo siento, señor, pero no hablo inglés_," she purrs, and then makes herself scarce.

Newkirk looks confused. Deryn has no idea what the girl said either, but she laughs at him just the same, and Alek joins in after a minute.

The next time, however, isn't funny at all. The next time, she's standing in the street, waiting for Newkirk and Alek to get done in the loo so they can all go back to the ship, when a sparrow comes up and starts fawning over _her_: good time this, handsome _chico_ that, lots of fun, giggles and hands all over the place.

Deryn panics. Why is it that other girls keep finding her attractive? "No," she hisses, pushing the sparrow away and darting glances around to make sure no one's overhearing. "I'm – barking spiders – not a _chico_!"

The sparrow blinks and steps back to scrutinize Deryn more closely. Then the fluttering eyelashes drop away to reveal a thoroughly businesslike attitude. The girl shrugs and says, "Okay, but costs extra_._"

"No!" Blisters, if her ma was here, she'd never hear the end of this! Deryn finally spots Alek and Newkirk and says, relieved, "I was just waiting for my friends, and there they are, so that's it."

The sparrow follows her line of sight. "Oh, you friends can join us, _chica._ Will cost triple. Okay, _sí?_"

"_No!_" Deryn exclaims. This is like a nightmare. Her and Alek, alone – aye, a couple years down the road, that idea's not half bad. But with a sparrow? And sodding _Newkirk_? There's not enough tequila in the world. She almost gags again. "I'm not bloody interested, lass. Go ask someone else, and leave me alone!"

She shakes the sparrow off and hurries to join the boys. The chippy, sounding cross, calls out something in Spanish; Deryn's just as glad not to understand her.

"What was that about?" Alek asks.

Deryn shudders. "You don't care to know."

.

.

.

…**And One Thing She Already Knew**

.

.

.

**I. Alek needs to do more things he's not supposed to.**

He's still dead terrible at sneaking. Newkirk is, too, but Deryn chalks that up to him being, well, Newkirk, and satisfies herself with smacking him when he makes too much noise. Alek, on the other hand, ought to be better at this by now.

It's late (or rather, early) when they slip back onboard the _Leviathan_, and she's positive that the officer on watch spots them crossing the airfield… but escaping for shore leave is one of those things that officers expect middies to do. They probably won't get in_ too_ much trouble with Mr. Rigby.

Deryn, after a bit of internal debate, follows Alek to his stateroom, telling herself it's to check on Bovril. And indeed, the loris wakes up as they enter, yawning and stretching out like a cat from the middle of Alek's pillow.

"Shore leave?" it says.

"Aye, you didn't miss much," Deryn tells it. The fabricated beastie tilts its little head and looks curious. She finds herself explaining, "There was a pub fight, and Newkirk tried to dance."

Bovril considers this. "Bad idea," it eventually says.

"You've got it dead right," Deryn agrees.

"I thought that it was… fun, all things considered," Alek says. "More so than I expected."

"That's because you didn't drink any tequila," she retorts. "And we'll see how much fun it is when we're both falling asleep mid-watch tomorrow."

He grins, but says with perfect seriousness, "I've never done anything like that before. Thank you."

She grins back at him. "Anytime, your archdukeness."

And she means it: sheltered prince that he's been, he really needs to get out more.


	52. interlocking

**Note:** And here's the first of the requests! I'm doing these in no particular order, soooo...

The original request from candygirl52793: _I would like... a sweet, romantic drabble of Alek and Deryn lying in __bed late at night contemplating... life? Haha, you choose specifics._

.

.

.

It's a small pleasure – a dark quiet room, a soft cool bed at the end of the day. And someone beloved to share it with her.

She settles herself beneath the sheets. Burrows in. Soundless, he puts an arm around her waist, gathering her closer, curling against her, her back to his front. She laces her fingers through his where they rest over her stomach. In the dark and moonlight, against the white linens, their skin is reduced to silvered shadows.

She can't think of a better way to finish today than curled up with him. He's warm and solid against her. Familiar. A comfort. Her breathing slows to match his as her eyes adjust to the darkness.

Tired but not quite ready to slide into sleep, she admires the way their fingers look, woven together like this. His are long and clever, all knuckles and blunt square nails; hers are nearly as long, at once more callused and more dainty – although she could stand to scrub better under her fingernails.

Everything about the two of them fits just right: hands, bodies, hearts, minds, lives.

She closes her eyes and sighs. Content.

"Do you ever wonder," he says softly, breath stirring the hair just behind her ear, "at how perfectly unlikely this is?"

Her eyes open. It's not quite mind-reading, but close enough to give her a little jolt. "You and me?"

He makes a small noise of assent.

"Sometimes I do," she admits. Oh, yes, sometimes she does wonder. She marvels. She falls on her knees and thanks God for the miracle that has put them together in this quiet room, in this hallowed bed, where they can keep each other awake until late at night, asking daft questions.

Just now she lightens her tone and adds, "But then I tell myself not to be such a ninny. Of course we ended up together."

He smiles. She can feel it against her shoulder, hear it in his voice: "Yes. Of course we did."

"Some things are meant to be, aye?" she says, toying with his fingers. "We're one of them. Any fool would know that."

"So I've heard," he says, tightening his grip on her hand. "And I couldn't agree more."

His mouth moves over her neck, warm and gentle, lighting a slow fire under her skin.

She closes her eyes again. Smiles.

It's a small pleasure – and someone beloved to share it with her.


	53. kiss on my list

**Note:** I'm on a roll!

The original request from blackfuzzdevil: _Well...I've been __wondering about Alek's reaction to Deryn's first kiss, that being with another __girl._

Title from the Hall & Oates song of the same name. :)

.

.

.

"I feel such a fool," Alek says, frowning. "I've only just realized - you kissed _another girl._"

"_She_ kissed _me_," Deryn points out. "And I could hardly complain too much about it, now, could I, without ruining my secret."

"Still. I encouraged it." He looks deeply concerned by this, as if he'll be struck down by an invisible Tesla cannon for not knowing something she was desperately hiding from him. "God's wounds, I thought it was _amusing_."

"It was, really," she says. Especially the look on his face at the time. "I mean, she knew the truth about me – did she think I was going to kiss her _back_? Barking mad anarchists."

For that matter, the look on his face right now is dead funny, too. "That doesn't make it better! – it's perfectly immoral!"

"So's my wearing trousers," she says. Then, reflecting on that: " 'Course, I wanted the trousers. Lilit, not so much. Mostly I just wanted to keep her away from _you_. Guess that worked, aye?"

He shakes his head, nose wrinkling up in distaste. "A little too well, it seems. But you must admit, it's rather unfortunate as well, to have wasted your first kiss on… on a mad anarchist girl."

"Oh, that wasn't my first kiss," she says without thinking.

He blinks at her. "It wasn't?" he asks, sounding just as dumfounded as he looks.

"No," she says, a little confused herself. Does he think she was a nun before she became an airman? "My first kiss was my second cousin Robbie. Second cousin once removed, actually… but I don't suppose that counts, since it was on a dare. My first _real_ kiss was Ned Wakefield, behind his da's shop. The next day he told me he fancied Katie Campbell more. Broke my heart for a whole week."

"I see," Alek says faintly. Now he has the look of someone who's been blindfolded, spun around, and asked to find his way again.

But she's warming to the memories and hardly notices. After Ned… "Jamie Duncan, now, that's who really taught me about kissing. Aye, he was _quite_ good. But he turned out to be a pure sodding bastard and I had to kick him in the shins. If I'd known how to throw a punch then, you can bet I would have… What?"

He's been staring at her, but now he reddens and clears his throat and looks away. "Nothing."

She narrows her eyes and tells herself that she won't laugh if her suspicions turn out to be true. She was no nun, but _sheltered Clanker prince_ is awfully close to _monk_. "Why? How many girls have _you_ kissed, your archdukeness?"

"That's really not important –"

"Aye, I think it is! Come on - I've told you all about mine."

"Very well." He looks down his nose at her, the picture of wounded princely dignity. Clipped and imperial, he says, "One. You."

"Oh," she says, and as sweet and sad as that is (very), she has a terrible time of not spilling over in giggles.

He scowls. "You don't have to be so amused. And what on earth were you doing kissing all of those boys, anyway?"

"Practicing for you, _Dummkopf_," she retorts, and pulls him close and proves it.


	54. occupational hazards

**Note:** The original request from Rue-the-Marauder: _Probably something from Alek's POV when he's emperor, with __Deryn storming in one day and slapping him._

The toughest part was trying to figure out why she'd slap him! :D

.

_._

_._

Alek is taking tea with his minister of finance, continuing a discussion they began earlier in the week, when the servant at the door attempts to announce Deryn.

It is only an attempt, however, because she stalks past the man and across the room before he can do more than utter the first syllable. She's wearing her flying clothes, including boots that provide a satisfactory stomp even on the fine carpet. Alek stands, forcing the finance minister to rise also - it being something more than poor manners to remain sitting when the emperor isn't - just as Deryn reaches them.

Without preamble, she slaps Alek across the face. Rather hard.

The crack of skin on skin is sharply audible; it doesn't feel very good, either.

"I beg your pardon, madam!" the finance minister exclaims, outraged on Alek's behalf - but much as she did with the footman, Deryn is already steamrolling past.

"You don't play the emperor with _me_," she says to Alek, furious. "I'll fly whenever I bloody well want to and in whatever I like!"

"It was for your own protection -" he begins, knowing that it's a largely futile effort.

"Barking spiders! I'm pregnant, not made of glass!" Deryn glares at him and points an accusing finger at his face. "You rescind that order right now, Alek, or I'll -"

He catches her wrists (so that she won't be tempted to strike him again) and kisses her. Rather hard.

The finance minister sits down in shock - and then, remembering himself, immediately stands again. Alek ignores it; he and Deryn tend to have that sort of an effect on people even under the best auspices. Besides, he is currently focused on more important matters.

Alek waits until a count of ten, then lets go. Her eyes are large and luminous, the color of the sky outside.

"I want you safe and well," he says, voice soft. "I will not apologize for that."

"I _will_ be safe, ninny," Deryn says. Her ire has been replaced by a wicked gleam of humor: "The question is, will you?"

"Not for another five months, I suspect," he says drily.

She grins.

"I'll rescind the order," he says, "but _please_ -"

"No aerobatics, aye, of course not. I'm not daft… not all the time, anyway," she says. She drops a gentle kiss on the palmprint now decorating his cheek and breathes, "Sorry, love," into his ear.

And with that, she's done. Deryn gives the finance minister an arch look as she sweeps out of the room again. No doubt off to the airfield again, to further terrorize the poor soldiers who have only been following their emperor's orders.

Alek touches his cheek. He finds he's grinning.

After a moment the finance minister recovers enough to manage, "The Empress seems well today."

"Yes," Alek says, pleased. "Indeed she does."


	55. tradition

Sometimes Alek regrets not being emperor.

Sometimes he mourns that lost chance – the opportunity to help his homeland. He might have done so much, if only fate had allowed it, and sometimes that gnaws at his heart.

Sometimes.

But not at moments like these, when it's just himself and Deryn in her mother's house in Glasgow. Clear summer sun fills the sitting room, spilling across the pages of his book and flashing in bright sparks on her sewing needle.

This quiet, appallingly domestic moment is precisely the kind that would never happen to an emperor, which is why he doesn't mind being Alek right now, as opposed to His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty Aleksandar. He's in a comfortable chair, reading _The Descent of Man_, and Deryn's sitting nearby, tailoring a jacket.

The book is to stave off boredom. The jacket is for him, to wear at her brother's wedding – whether he likes it or not.

He rather doesn't. It's not the jacket he objects to, specifically; it's the rest of the clothes. Earlier this week, when she first presented him with the outfit (which smelled strongly of camphor), he took one look and said, "Is that a _skirt_?"

"No, it's a kilt. It's traditional, aye?"

"I'm not going to wear a skirt!"

"_Kilt_. And you bloody well are. It's Jaspert's wedding and he wants you in this, so you're going to wear it."

"Deryn, there's no reason for me to wear your brother's old _kilt_. I have more than enough formal suits –"

"You ninny, they're trying to show you're part of the family. And it's not Jaspert's old kilt," she added, blue eyes snapping a warning. "It's my da's."

His arguments abruptly deflated. "Oh."

Without further fuss, he submitted to the initial round of trying on the shirt, the kilt, the waistcoat, and the jacket, all of which she stuck full of pins and has since been industriously altering, much to her mother's _finally-she's-a-girl_ approval.

(Her mother will be less delighted if she finds out the sort of shenanigans they've been getting up to during all of the fittings. Which is why neither of them are going to mention those incidents to her mother.)

"There we are," Deryn says now, satisfied, around the two pins in her mouth. She holds up the jacket by its shoulders and gives it a shake. "Try it on."

He closes the book, lays it aside, stands, and obediently lets her use him, again, as a dressmaker's dummy. She tugs and straightens, smoothes and shifts, and steps back to give him a critical once-over. "Not bad," she says, taking the pins out of her mouth and sticking them back into her pincushion. "Go put on the rest, and let's see it finished."

"All of it?" he asks, balking.

"No, just the shoes, _Dummkopf_," she says, rolling her eyes impatiently. "Aye, all of it! I have to make certain it looks right together."

He looks at her, at the stubborn set of her jaw, and sighs. "Very well."

He shrugs out of the jacket and carries it upstairs, to the room that he's been given, where the rest of the made-over clothes are laid out on the chair. With another sigh, he changes into the shirt and the kilt, which still smells a bit too much of camphor for his tastes. Despite multiple opportunities to practice wrapping and buckling the kilt, his fingers somehow remain awkward. Perhaps it's because he really doesn't want to wear it. Or perhaps it's because, in the end, it's always been Deryn who's done this part.

(And undone it… which they will not be mentioning to her mother.)

He puts on the waistcoat and the jacket before sitting down to pull on the socks and his own black leather Oxfords.

Carrying the tie, the belt, and the sporran, he goes downstairs again. He feels absolutely ridiculous wearing what he knows is – her assurances otherwise – _a skirt_. The front pieces are called "aprons" and there are pleats in the back, for heaven's sake. All that and his knees are showing. It's difficult to believe that in a matter of days he's going to be standing about in public like this.

Oh well; it's for a good enough cause.

Deryn whistles appreciatively when he reappears, and Alek flushes red despite himself. He tries to hide his embarrassment in nonchalance: "I suppose I pass inspection, then?"

"I didn't say that," she says, then plucks the final accessories out of his hands. She loops the tie around his neck and fastens the knot. Her fingers are quick and sure, and he marvels privately. No one should be able to handle a rigging knife, a necktie, and a sewing needle alike with such aplomb. She's quite amazing.

But then, he already knew that.

She does up the belt around his waist and makes further minute adjustments to everything. He stays motionless and derives a quiet satisfaction from breathing in her scent as she moves.

Then she draws away and studies him; he tries not to fidget.

A slow, wide smile spreads across her face. "Dead perfect. You look like a proper Scot."

"Wonderful," he says, doing his utmost not to show how much the compliment means to him. He's not Scottish; he's Austrian. He shouldn't care that he looks good in a kilt. _Skirt_. He gestures broadly at the ensemble. "May I take this off now? It's a bit, well, uncomfortable."

"No." She steps close again and fiddles with the jacket lapels, avoiding his gaze. "Not for a while yet. I want Ma to see when she gets back. Mind you, she'll cry her eyes out, but it won't be because of _you_."

"I understand," he says softly, touching her chin, making her look at him. The sadness that's been lurking in the back of her own eyes comes out in full force. He leans forward and places a gentle kiss on her mouth – one fatherless child to another. "And I'm honored by – all of this. Truly. I don't believe I've said that yet."

"You haven't," she says. "But say it as much as you like."

"I shall. Do I really look Scottish?"

"Aye, mostly," she says, mischief glinting, "but there's one more tradition about kilts you'll need to follow, if you want to be a _true_ Scotsman."

"What?" he asks, a bit apprehensive – and rightly so, he discovers, as she grins and whispers it into his ear.

.

.

.

**Note:** Not a request (still working on those, BTW), but it had to be written! Because there are few things in this world better than cute boys in kilts. ;)

If you don't know the joke about what true Scotsmen wear under their kilts… where have _you_ been? According to Wikipedia, _"The Scottish Tartans Authority, however, has described the practice as childish and unhygienic."_ Boo.


	56. face to face

**Note: **Real life (and "What You Are"... go read it if'n you haven't! [/shameless plug]) have been demanding my attention, but I should be updating this a little more quickly again. Thanks for your patience! :)

The original request from Taman Guard: _Anyway, I kind of think a fic set in our times would be cool._

_._

_._

_._

Deryn doesn't know what to wear.

She stands in the middle of her room for a good ten minutes, panicking about which pair of jeans would be best, which t-shirt, which hoodie – or should she wear a skirt and leggings? – before exclaiming, "Sod it all!" and grabbing the first things she lays hands on.

She's furious at herself for being such a girl. It's not like she's going out to meet anyone important – just a friend who likes the same MMO she does. And, all right, Alek's come all the way from Vienna, but it's his money, not hers; no reason for _her_ to get all fidgety about the expense.

And, all right, he's cute (or at least his picture was) and she likes him better than any of the boys at school, who are all tossers with nothing to talk about besides football and which girl has the nicest chest. (Never her.)

And Alek thinks it's pure dead brilliant, not strange, that she'll get her pilot's license before her driver's license.

And she just might be in love with him.

And he thinks she's a boy.

She groans and puts her face in her hands and throws herself a rather nice pity party for a few moments. Then she pulls herself together, laces up her Converse, grabs her backpack and her music and runs down the stairs and out the door before she can change her mind.

It's not her fault that Alek thinks she's a boy. Really – it's the game's fault. When she started playing _World War Leviathan_ two months ago, only male characters could be pilots. Plenty of other people were complaining about it (in fact that's why she was on the forum where she first met Alek), but Deryn was more interested in playing than complaining. So she named her avatar "Dylan" and never looked back.

And when she started talking to Alek in-game, he called her Dylan. She didn't care. She had lots of gamer friends she chatted with online who called her by usernames, and she'd never thought twice about that. It was the internet. If you weren't going by something perfectly daft, what was the point?

She never expected, back then, that they'd become fast friends, and so quickly: they just _clicked_, the two of them, almost from minute one. She never expected he'd want to come all the way to Glasgow to meet her in person, either. She certainly never expected that _she'd_ want him to.

Deryn frets and broods about it while she waits for the train. It wasn't as though she'd _pretended_ to be a boy. He hadn't asked, and she'd thought it was so obvious she didn't need to come right out and say it.

Besides. Sort of an awkward sentence to plop into the middle of a conversation. _By the way, you __**do**__ know I'm a girl, right?_

Maybe, when they'd finally exchanged photos, she should have taken a new one, or sent the photo of her from her auntie's fortieth birthday – buried under half a tonne of makeup and hair products, courtesy of her ma, but looking properly feminine as a result.

Right. Should have used one of those, and not the one of her from when her hair was its shortest ever. Even _she_ has to admit that she looks like a boy in that one – but it was the Red Arrows jet she was posing with that she wanted Alek to see. She hadn't been thinking about her hair and his inability to take a sodding hint.

It's a disaster, that's what it is.

Deryn turns the volume loud and pulls her hood low, trying not to think or be noticed.

She takes the train to Queen Street Station and goes on foot from there to George's Square. It's Saturday, and fine weather, so there's plenty of people about. She catches herself staring at every boy that might be her age, might be from out of town, or might expect her to be a boy too.

They agreed to meet by the statue of Queen Victoria – Deryn's logic being that Alek might not know Sir Walter Scott from a hole in the ground, but a lady with a crown and a sword, riding a horse, is hard to misidentify.

When she gets there, there's a pair of fat Americans taking photos and wondering aloud who all the statues are supposed to be… and no Alek. She sits on the stepped base of the statue's plinth, stares hard at the marker scribbles on her shoes, and tries to ignore the Americans.

Maybe he was winding her up. Maybe he's not coming. Maybe he's at home right now having a good laugh at her. That thought hurts, but in some way it'd be a relief. Then she could go home, write him off as another tosser, and pretend she never liked him to start with.

Minutes drag by. The Americans leave, pigeons bobble and weave a cautious distance from her feet, people with things to do bustle past. The city goes right on around her as if her nerves aren't fraying more and more every second.

Deryn can't stand it.

She pulls her sketchbook out of her backpack and starts drawing the City Chambers – not because she loves the architecture but because it looks difficult enough to distract her from fretting.

It _is_ a nice building, though. Lots of little intricate bits and bobs. She's rubbing out the whole of one cupola to try again when a voice behind her says, "Dylan?"

Her heart skips.

Quick as anything, she's on her feet and turning around, nearly dropping her sketchbook and smacking into the plinth in the process.

There's a boy her age standing there, looking exactly like his picture: reddish-brown hair, green eyes, dead cute.

Behind him is a soldierly man in a gray suit and tie, and idling streetside - violating all sorts of traffic laws - is a sleek black car with its uniformed driver standing by the door, hands folded, waiting.

Deryn looks back at Alek. Well. Seems she's not the only one who hasn't mentioned a few things.

(Suddenly she feels a lot better about him spending all that money to come visit.)

Alek shifts, nervous and doing a poor job of hiding it. "You _are_ Dylan, correct?" he asks.

"Aye," she says, then shuffles her own feet. "Now, about that..."

.

.

.

**Bonus Note:** I have An Idea for more of this. But first I gotta finish some of the other requests. :D


	57. oh brother

**Note:** Original request from stars21: _I __would like to request a drabble that features Jaspert and Alek meeting for the __first time after Deryn comes home._

This is set in the same future!verse as "tradition", but takes place (rather obviously) before that. And the last line's for Taman Guard. :)

.

.

.

Alek follows Jaspert until it becomes clear that the pretense of their trek is just that: a pretense. Then he stops, planting his feet on the sidewalk and refusing to move another inch.

Jaspert stops too, turning to face him, though he has to look down to do so – he's even taller than his sister. The older boy's annoyance shows plainly, but beneath that is an undercurrent of something else that Alek can't, as yet, identify.

"We're not 'going round to meet the lads'," Alek says flatly. "Are we."

Jaspert makes a show of wincing. "Don't - you haven't half got the accent for it. And no, we're bloody well not. It was just the only way to get you out of the house without _her_."

Alek opens his mouth to say something cutting about Jaspert's friends, and how he doubts any of them would be of interest to a former heir apparent… and then thinks better of it. "So I see. What do you want to discuss?"

Jaspert glances around. "Here? In the middle of the barking street?"

Alek shrugs as if he doesn't care in the slightest. As if Jaspert's opinion of him, this finely crackling animosity that's run between them since first meeting yesterday, could have no possible effect on his future.

Deryn's brother sighs. "All right, then." He squares his shoulders and spreads his feet slightly, as if he's anticipating a fistfight, not a conversation. The impression is helped along by his belligerent tone: "What're your intentions?"

"Towards Deryn?"

"Towards the sodding loris. Yes, towards Deryn!" Jaspert glances around again, then steps closer, jabbing an accusing finger into Alek's shoulder. "She thinks you're her one and only, but what you look like to me is a fancy boy with more money than brains and a _damn_ difficult time keeping your loyalties straight."

Alek scowls and brushes at the spot on his jacket where Jaspert's finger landed. It's a more appropriate reaction, he thinks, than the swelling elation in his chest.

He wasn't certain, when he arrived in Glasgow months ago, if what had seemed so clear during the war would still make sense in peacetime. Many long conversations and astonishing, burning kisses later, he can say with confidence: It does. At least for him.

_Her one and only._ God's wounds, he hopes so.

He therefore dislikes Jaspert's insinuations. "I assure you, I am taking your sister quite seriously."

Jaspert scoffs – whether at Alek's words or at Alek himself, it's hard to say. "There's serious and then there's _serious_, and you've signed yourself up for that last one, Your Highness. Deryn doesn't do things by halves. She'll not be satisfied now until you get a ring on her finger, aye?"

He didn't know that. He holds the information close to the glow in his heart and tries to remain impassive. "We're sixteen. That's a bit young yet, in modern society. Don't you think?"

Jaspert is shaking his head, slow and pitying. "You _have_ met my sister, haven't you?"

"Ah," Alek says. "True enough."

They both stand in contemplation of Deryn Sharp for a moment – although Alek's thoughts on the subject are, of course, substantially different from Jaspert's.

What is she doing right now? he wonders. Arguing with her mother, most likely, about wearing trousers in public. Alek likes the way she looks in trousers; he's used to it. And besides, she has rather long legs, and he enjoys seeing them.

"And you are going to put a sodding ring on her finger," Jaspert says, abruptly fierce, jabbing into Alek's shoulder again and breaking him out of his reverie. "Make no mistake of _that_, lad. Practically living under Ma's roof for the last six months - I don't care whose barking son you are. That's my sister and you're going to do right by her _or else_."

"Of course I am. I was going to wait a year or two," Alek says angrily, pushing the other boy's hand away. "Until we're older, and my inheritance is more... settled. I have a ring; one of my mother's. A sapphire. I think – I think she shall like it."

Jaspert looks a bit taken aback by this forthrightness. "Oh," he says lamely. Shuffles his feet and rubs a hand across the back of his neck. "Well. Good, then."

"I _am_ taking her very seriously," Alek says, embarrassed now.

"You should, Clanker, she deserves it." Jaspert rocks back on his heels, regarding Alek contemplatively. "Want to go round and meet the lads? – for real this time. We'll be generous and let you buy, how's that?"

Alek thinks about it. "Why not?" he says with a small shrug. Jaspert jerks a thumb towards the other side of the street, and they cross, dodging four-legged traffic.

"You and I might be friends yet, Alek." Cheerfully, Jaspert claps him on the shoulder and adds, "But break her heart and I'll break your legs, aye?"


	58. cover story

**Note:** I like the newly-revealed cover art for Goliath, but... it was clearly in want of fangirl scrutiny. To catch the little things, aye? ;)

.

.

.

She tilts her head left, then right, studying the picture.

"Well, it's better than the first two," she says eventually, dubious.

"Anything would be," he says. "I do dislike this insistence on photography."

"I wouldn'tve lasted five seconds in the Air Service with a disguise as bad as _that_ one – she looks like a perfect girl! And what ninny thinks you're taller than me?"

He frowns. "I believe we promised not to discuss height. Remember?"

She ignores. "They should just use the drawings from inside the book. Those are lovely."

"Indeed," he says. "But that makes far too much sense."


	59. loris in translation

**Note:** The original and extremely detailed request from sarra's-sorceress: _requestish thing being something about deryn and alek with bovril wondering __about how much the loris actually understands (and possibly with deryn being __especially worried about what exactly does bovril mean by saying all __the time)_

And I apologize for the incredibly lame pun in the chapter title... brain fail. :)

.

.

.

"_Ohayou gozaimasu_," the loris says.

Alek stares, surprised, while Dylan starts laughing. "Blisters! That's a mouthful. Who taught you that one, beastie?"

Bovril tilts its head and looks imploringly at Alek. "Japan."

"Indeed, that's where we're going," Alek tells Bovril, picking it up and settling it on his shoulder. To Dylan, he says, "I wonder if it's been talking to the other loris. Perhaps one of them was listening to Dr. Barlow, or Captain Hobbes?"

"Aye, maybe," Dylan says, sounding dubious. He looks closely at the loris. "Or maybe not. They really are clever, aren't they?"

"Mimicry and, er, perspicacious tendencies aren't signs of true intelligence," Alek says. "And I believe I heard something said once about fabricated creatures not possessing human reasoning."

Dylan nods. "That's one of old Charles Darwin's rules. One of the most important."

"There you are. Surely Dr. Barlow wouldn't violate her own grandfather's rules," Alek says firmly.

Bovril chuckles. Unreasoning mimic or clever animal, it's certainly chosen an unsettling moment to laugh.

Alek and Dylan look at it somewhat askance. It blinks its enormous eyes and flicks one rounded ear side-to-side, adorable as can be.

"Well. It can't be _that_ intelligent," Alek says after a few seconds. "Look at how it says your name."

Dylan coughs and adjusts the knot of his tie. "Aye, that's – Aye. No telling what it's on about with that."

Bovril stares straight at the midshipman and says, "_Mr_. Sharp."

"You must admit, that's rather peculiar," Alek says, noticing without really heeding the fierce glare that Dylan shoots the creature.

"Peculiar," Bovril says. Chuckles. "_Mr._ Sharp."

"Dr. Barlow thinks it might be broken," Dylan says in a rush. For some reason he's turning red. "From what happened to it as an egg."

Alek frowns, thinking about it, one hand absently scratching the loris' head. "I suppose that makes sense…"

"Or maybe it's just spent too much time around _you_," Dylan adds, grinning. The expression seems slightly strained. "All you Clankers are cracked in the attic."

Alek knows his friend too well to take any sort of offense. Instead he thinks for a moment and comes back with, "What does that say about you, then, Midshipman Sharp?"

Dylan laughs, Alek grins – and, largely unnoticed, Bovril giggles and murmurs, "Darwin's rules."


	60. parallel universe: cross twice

**Note:** The original (albeit heavily edited) request from Beboots: _How __about something [in the "parallel universe"] universe …. in __which Mistress!Deryn doesn't tolerate disrespect from someone?_

Ha ha ha! Little Did You Know I had already planned for that very thing. :D

_._

_._

_._

_Maybe our paths are not supposed to cross twice_

_- from "Destiny Rules" by Fleetwood Mac_

.

.

.

"I don't know why you go to those things," Jaspert's wife says, a touch accusingly, as Deryn pauses to take a drink of coffee.

Deryn makes a face. She's too tired and she's got too much to do today to tolerate Emma's blether. In fact, she ought to be out at Wormwood Scrubs already, readying the balloon, instead of recounting last night's party to her brother over a much-too-early breakfast. "I went because I was invited."

"No you weren't," Jaspert says around a mouthful of food. He's amused, not reproving. "You snuck in with one of those suffragettes."

"She invited me, then. And she _was_ invited - so there." Deryn takes another slurp of coffee, wondering how much she'll have to drink before she stops feeling as though she's been keelhauled. "Anyway, it wasn't half bad. There was a Clanker bloke there who talked to me like I might have a brain, and not just two legs to spread."

Emma pushes back her chair and sweeps out of the room with all the righteous indignation she can muster. Deryn doesn't bother watching her go; it's an old performance at this point.

But Jaspert is another matter. "You could watch your bloody mouth!" he says in a low, aggravated whisper, leaning forward over the table.

She copies the posture and the tone. "_You're_ the one who taught me how to swear!"

"But not around Emma! Barking hell, d'you know how hard I had to work, convincing her to let my disreputable little sister live here?"

"You're a hypocrite and a coward, Jaspert Sharp," she says, stung by the bit about _disreputable_. Well, so she is; but that doesn't mean she wants to hear her brother say it.

"Aye, and I'm in love with my wife and want her happy." Jaspert stands and points at her, warning, "Mind your manners, Deryn, or you'll be home again with Ma."

He leaves to go placate Emma; Deryn sticks her tongue out at his back. She finishes her coffee and rinses the cup, then goes in search of her heavy airman's jacket. She hadn't been lying when she told Alek it got cold aloft, even now in the spring.

Alek. She never would've offered to take him up if it hadn't been for the look of sadness that hung around him. Sadness and loneliness, for all that he's obviously barking rich. It's daft of her – she just spent four years fighting Clankers, after all – but she can't help feeling sorry for him.

And liking him. No one ever takes her seriously anymore, not even the suffragettes. _They _only want to use her for their cause; everyone else just points and whispers, like she's some sort of defective beastie. But Alek took her seriously.

And he was pure dead handsome, too.

She catches herself smiling like a perfect looby and shakes her head.

The jacket is right where it oughtn't to be, hanging in the cloakroom, and as she's dusting off the fabricated leather, the doorbell chimes.

"Get that!" Jaspert shouts from elsewhere.

Deryn glares at nothing, but gets the door. A man in some sort of uniform is standing on the other side, more shadow than not in the weak light. At first she takes him for a policeman, but then she realizes his insignia are military: not Air Service, though.

"Good morning, sir. I have a message for a Miss Sharp," the man says, and Deryn suddenly remembers she's wearing her trousers.

"Aye, that's me," she says, as girlishly as possible.

The soldier looks bewildered, then repulsed, but eventually hands over an envelope, adding, "I'm to wait for a reply."

She lets him in, but no farther than it takes to shut the door again. Then she tears the envelope open and, full of curiosity, reads the note inside.

_Miss Sharp_, it begins, handwriting clear and firm and graceful. Somehow she knows it's from Alek before she goes any farther.

_Miss Sharp,_

_An urgent matter has been brought to my attention, and I must return to Vienna immediately to see it resolved. I deeply regret any inconvenience that this may cause to you; I assure you that I was quite looking forward to our expedition and would not have missed it for anything less than this current difficulty._

_Yours, etc._

_Alek_

"Who are you? What's that?" Jaspert asks, making her start. He plucks the message out of her hands while its deliverer explains himself. Jaspert waves the man to silence and reads, brow furrowed in concentration. "What the bloody hell does he mean, 'our expedition'? _Deryn!_"

"That's none of your concern," she snaps, face burning, making a grab for the paper and missing.

"It is while you're living here!" Still holding the message out of her reach, her brother turns to the soldier and demands, "Who sent this?"

The soldier stops just short of a derisive sniff. "His Majesty the Emperor of Austria-Hungary."

Jaspert gapes. Deryn is equally poleaxed, but has the presence of mind to snatch the message back while she can. She stuffs it into her shirt pocket quickly, the better to keep it away from her brother.

Why she wants to keep it, she has no idea - it's bad news, presented in as stilted a manner as could be. Perhaps it's because it's from a barking _emperor_.

…who is handsome, and lonely, and sad.

Who took her seriously.

Who is going home to Vienna.

Today.

"Is – has he gone yet?" she asks the soldier.

This time he doesn't bother to hide the sniff. "That's hardly your affair, _miss_."

It's the condescending "miss" that does it. Deryn sees red.

"Aye, it is, you stuck-up bag of clart!" she says, advancing on the man and doing her best impression of an angry Mr. Rigby. "And you'll remember I'm friends with _Alek_, so take that tone with me, lad, and I'll have you tossed out on your bum before lunch today!"

The last was more her ma than the bosun, but the effect is the same. The soldier blanches and gives her a shallow bow. Suddenly he can't talk fast enough: "I beg your pardon, ma'am, please excuse me. The emperor is leaving from Hyde Park in an hour or so. Just as soon as the King's own airbeast arrives. Ma'am."

Deryn calculates hurriedly. Hyde Park is hard on Buckingham Palace – of course that's where Alek would be staying (barking spiders, an _emperor_!) – and she can get there in time, if she leaves right away. "Jaspert," she says, turning to her brother.

"Right, right," he says, sighing, holding up a hand. "But I'm going with you. Ma will kill us both if I don't."

Jaspert goes off to inform Emma, and Deryn wonders if she should swap her trousers for a dress… but no. There's no time, and besides, she hates wearing dresses.

Her blood is singing. At last: an _urgent matter_ of her own.

Blisters, but she's tired of being useless, tired of having no purpose. Sneaking about, talking to emperors – this'll be the most fun she's had since the war ended. She'll just have to make certain she doesn't get shot by the royal guards.

"Ma'am," the soldier says, still mindful of her ire, "what reply am I to give the emperor?"

"Nothing," Deryn says, grinning fierce. "I'll tell him myself."


	61. alive and on time

**Note:**The original anonymous request: _I'd love to see Nellie Bly, ragtime, and/or Coney Island mentioned._

Check, check, check! Oh – and I hope you like Ruth Law, too.

_._

_._

_._

_"I fly because I like to. _

_I like the feel of the air and I like to do things that other girls can't."_

_- Ruth Law_

_._

_._

_"I am off for New York. Look out for me."_

_- Nellie Bly_

.

.

.

The wind gusts, and Alek makes an automatic grab for his hat. Deryn does not; her much-hated hat "mysteriously" blew away on the ferry, and is presumably now floating somewhere on the Hudson River.

"Imagine," she says, shivering and clutching his arm more tightly. "Her barking cockpit's exposed! She said she planned on wearing four flight suits."

The November wind cuts through his coat and the layers of wool beneath, making him wish for thicker gloves. A surreptitious glance at their fellow bystanders reveals that he's not the only one suffering in the cold.

"I'd prefer at least six," he says.

Deryn grins at him, wind whipping at her skirts and blowing strands of hair across her face. "Aye, you walker pilots are all such babies."

He smiles in return and gives serious consideration to smoothing some of that stray hair back into place – but such action would necessarily terminate in a kiss, and he's not quite daring enough to kiss her in front of the New York City press and all of the soldiers billeted on Governors Island.

Instead he checks his pocket watch. "She's overdue," he notes.

Deryn seems unconcerned. "She'll make it here just fine."

"Goodness, I hope so," a voice says behind them. "Though we'd sell more papers if she doesn't."

Alek half-turns to see a matronly woman with graying hair, a smart sense of fashion, a reporter's notebook in her hands, and a remarkable amount of moxie still sparkling in her eyes.

"Nellie!" Deryn exclaims, delighted, and lets go of Alek's arm to go embrace the journalist, who's more than old enough to be her mother – but who is, Alek knows from experience, much more fun than the actual Mrs. Sharp. "What're you doing here?"

Mrs. Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, best known as the famous and infamous Nellie Bly, gestures at the scene with a smile. "Really! A woman setting a travel record – where else would I be? This will be a wonderful story for my readers. Especially with the two of you here!"

"You may, of course, choose to leave us out," Alek says, shaking hands. He shouldn't, but one doesn't choose how one greets Nellie Bly. One doesn't choose anything about Nellie Bly, including how she arrives in one's life.

To wit: eighteen months ago, she had shown up unannounced at the front gates of Konopischt and declared, _Your lives are the story of the century, and I'm going to write it._

Alek had allowed this after realizing that Bly shared an appreciation for two of his favorite things: the Empire of Austria-Hungary, and feisty girls with a propensity towards mad adventures.

She also had said, _I'll never work for those lying sneaks at __**The New York World **again__, _which had pleased him to no end.

The series of articles (for the _New York Evening Journal_) that followed were breathless in their enthusiasm for himself and Deryn, which was very gratifying, of course – although he hardly expected anyone in America to care. But when they'd landed in New York City a few days ago, Alek had been amazed to discover that the pair of them were something like celebrities.

"Nonsense! You're my favorite subjects, and the _Evening Journal_ will be pleased as punch to have us all in one place. But what _are_ you doing here, Your Highness?" Bly asks shrewdly. "With your dear granduncle as sick as he is."

Alek's mouth twitches into a smile; Volger had made the same complaint. The emperor has been sick for a long while, but resolutely refuses to die. Alek dislikes playing the vulture. He finds the role almost as distasteful as his granduncle.

Luckily, just as Vienna was becoming intolerable, a letter had arrived from Miss Law, one of Deryn's many friends in the States (they seem to grow mad, modern women on trees here), inviting them to watch her set an aviation record. It was a perfect excuse to flee.

Alek says, "I have every confidence that His Majesty Franz Joseph will live well into the next century – if only to spite me."

Bly chuckles.

"Don't laugh," Deryn says, scowling. "He's just bastard enough to do it."

Alek touches her arm; she glances at him, and her expression softens… very slightly.

"Well, he bloody is," she mutters to no one.

In the background, the military band finishes warming up and launches into a jaunty bit of ragtime music. They sound quite good, Alek thinks. Another one of the great surprises of America: he actually enjoys ragtime.

Nellie Bly gives both of them a fond, calculating look, then says, "Not a bad turnout for such a miserable day. I remember my homecoming in '90 – it's lovely to be cheered at, don't you think?"

"Indeed," Alek agrees. It's much better than being shot at, for example.

"Mr. Pulitzer sent a train all the way to California to get me here in time," Bly says.

Alek's heart sinks; that dreamy-eyed expression of reminiscing is all too familiar. He sees it regularly on Deryn's face, usually followed by monstrously exaggerated versions of true events. He glances at Deryn now. She's squinting up at the sky, looking for her friend's plane.

Bly continues, "That was when I was working for _The_ _World_, you remember. Around the world in seventy-two days – a record at the time. Oh, it was exciting! If I was twenty years younger, I'd be up there today with Miss Law."

The wind gusts; Alek and Bly grab for their respective hats. One of the reporters isn't fast enough, and he goes chasing after it as it tumbles and rolls across the wide swath of dirt and dead grass. The scene make an amusing counterpoint to the cheery music.

"Aye, I wouldn't mind being up there myself," Deryn says, grinning at Bly.

The alarming thing is that this is completely true.

"Why aren't you, my dear?" Bly asks her. "I have it on good authority that you and Miss Law are particular friends."

Deryn wrinkles her nose. "His Highness '_won't allow it'_."

Bly raises an eyebrow.

Alek says, in a perfectly neutral monotone, "It is in the best interests of the Empire that Miss Sharp remain safely on the ground."

The other eyebrow goes up. Bly glances at Deryn, then back at Alek.

"That's a load of yackum, and he barking knows it," Deryn says, taking his arm again, "but we only argue about it in private."

Alek covers her hand with his and squeezes. Gently. He can feel the outline of the ring, hidden beneath her glove, and wonders how his granduncle's health is at this moment.

In some respects he is dreading the day that Franz Joseph dies. In certain other respects, however… he can't wait.

"I see," Bly says, tone wry. She probably does. She pulls out a pen from her coat, opens her notebook, and gracefully changes the subject. "Tell me, Your Highness, Miss Sharp – do you think Miss Law's record will stand?"

Deryn shrugs. "It's a miracle she set a record at all in that old crate and in this weather. Someone with a faster aircraft could beat her, easy."

"Someone with a faster _Austrian_ aircraft, perhaps?" Bly asks, pen poised.

Deryn flashes a wolfish grin; Alek succumbs to the inevitable. "Not until next spring, at the earliest," he says.

Bly scribbles a few pleased notes. "Don't forget to invite me! I could get another book's worth out of that."

"Oh, aye. I'll even take you up," Deryn promises.

"Marvelous! I'll wear my most dashing scarf and goggles," the journalist says, scribbling more. "Which reminds me, my dear - your dress is very smart, but you really ought to have a hat. Now, what are your plans for the rest of your visit here?"

"We shall be leaving this evening," Alek says, "if not this afternoon."

"So soon!"

"Yes, unfortunately." Alek is unwilling to discuss the finer points of the furious wireless messages he's had from Volger. Miss Law was supposed to arrive yesterday, but a late start and the lack of lights on her aircraft meant she had to put down at sunset, in a little town called Binghamton. Now Alek and Deryn are late themselves – something which is not sitting well with his old fencing tutor.

Alek adds, "My granduncle is, after all, unwell."

"And a sodding bastard," Deryn says, apparently in case anyone has forgot.

Bly chuckles and says, "I hope you've at least had time to visit Coney Island," but whatever else she means to tell them is lost in the general hurrah of excitement as Miss Law's plane is spotted. The military band stops playing popular music and prepares for a fanfare.

Alek checks his pocket watch. Half past nine in the morning, November 20, 1916.

"Give me those," Deryn barks to one of the soldiers; skirts or not, the tone of command is unmistakable. The hapless young man quickly puts a pair of field glasses into her hands, and she lifts her gaze skyward. "Aye, there she is! Blisters, that's a terrible plane she's flying. What was she thinking?"

"I'm more concerned about the wind," Alek says, squinting until Deryn passes him the field glasses. And indeed, the tiny yellow aircraft is being buffeted about in the sky. The pilot seems to be struggling with the antiquated controls, and the faint noise of the engine is reaching them in stutters.

"Do you think she'll crash?" Bly asks, sounding genuinely worried. She flips to a fresh page in her notebook.

"No," Deryn says as Alek gives her the binoculars again. "Leastways, she won't if her engine doesn't cut out."

"Could that happen?"

"She pushed the engine very hard yesterday, covering that distance," Alek says. "I'm not familiar with Curtiss engines, but I know –"

"Barking spiders!" Deryn exclaims. "There it goes – aye, now she's in trouble!"

There is nothing that anyone on the ground can do except stand where they are and watch, uselessly, as Miss Law attempts to land her aircraft without the benefit of an engine.

Alek knows that Miss Law is a superb pilot, well-used to death-defying stunts. She was the first woman to perform a loop-de-loop, one of the first to try night flying, and can skim expertly only a few meters above the ground, racing cars and fabricated beasts alike. If there's anyone who can land a plane on a small island, in the middle of a large bay, under strong winds, and without an engine, it's going to be her.

But she flew so far yesterday – and all of the newspapers said that she had been exhausted…

Deryn has a white-knuckled grip on his arm. "Come on, Ruth!" she says softly, face and voice tight with worry. He hopes she's not about to watch her friend crash and, God forbid, die. He'll never forgive himself for agreeing to this trip if that happens.

The plane glides lower. The wings rock.

Bly is scribbling madly in her notebook, hardly looking at the page or her pen, all of her attention fixed on the small plane as it drops below the level of the rooftops on Governors Island.

Alek finds himself holding his breath.

The wheels touch down on the parade ground grass. Bounce. Touch again. The wings tip sideways -

- and then Miss Law corrects and taxis the plane to a smoothly controlled stop. Her grin is clearly visible beneath her leather flying helmet and goggles. She lifts a hand from the controls and waves.

Everyone cheers; hats are thrown. The band plays a triumphant fanfare as the soldiers and reporters rush forward to greet America's newest heroine.

Deryn would ordinarily be the first one to the plane, but instead she lets out a whoop, plucks Alek's hat from his head, and kisses him soundly.

It's a thrill, as always, despite the fact that they've been kissing for nearly two years. Her lips are cold, but the contact warms him to his core. Despite his misgivings, he finds himself pleased to continue.

A flash. Alek breaks the kiss, startled. Bly, looking like a cat that's caught a particularly fine canary, is standing beside a photographer who's just lowering his camera.

Blast.

Deryn swears under her breath.

"So much for discretion," Alek says drily. He doubts that even the great and daring Nellie Bly can persuade a newspaper to run _that_ sort of photo – but he's not going to put it past her.

"Aye, well, I couldn't resist," Deryn says, grinning.

"So I see," he says, and she laughs, and he kisses her again, feeling embarrassed and happy all at once.

The photographer takes another picture, Deryn shouts playful accusations at Nellie Bly, who returns them with zest, Alek collects his hat, and then they all go to give Ruth Law their congratulations on her brilliant, record-setting flight.

.

.

.

**Note:** Ruth Law's record of 590 miles nonstop (Chicago to Hornell, NY, more specifically) was broken in 1917… by another woman. EPIC WINS ALL AROUND.

See my LJ for more on Ruth Law and Nellie Bly, if'n you're interested. :)


	62. alive and on time: coda

**Note:** This didn't fit with the rest of the story, but I wanted to put it out there anyway. :)

.

.

.

The news catches them while they're over the Atlantic.

Alek is returning to his stateroom from the head, wondering where he can find a suitable aircraft in which to set a non-stop distance record (perhaps he will have one commissioned; that should please Deryn and anger his granduncle all at once), when he sees a uniformed porter hurrying away in other direction.

Curious, he continues on to discover Deryn standing in the middle of the cabin, frowning at a slip of paper in her hands.

"What is it?" he asks, concerned, closing the door behind him.

She looks up. Passes him the paper. Her expression is unreadable, and her tone likewise offers no clues. "Just came over the wireless."

He blinks at the message. It's from Schönbrunn Palace, in Vienna. The date is clearly written on the top: November 21, 1916. Those two details are the last things he reads that make any sort of sense.

"This can't be," he says, going numb. He looks up. "Deryn. Did you read this -?"

She folds his hands over the news that his granduncle is dead, and kisses him, very gently, on the cheek. "Aye, Your Majesty. Long live the king."


	63. dream on

**Note:** Inspired by the April 1st Goliath art reveal. That picture's too cracky not to have some fun with! :D

.

.

.

"Deryn?" Alek asks, shaking her shoulder. "Are you awake?"

"Mmph," she says, followed by a bleary and slightly aggrieved, "Aye, _now_."

"I just had the most peculiar dream," he says.

Far from being interested or even sympathetic, she rolls over and burrows into her pillow. She's halfway asleep again already, as evidenced by the mumbled, "Indigestion. Told you... not to... at dinner..."

He waits a beat, then - when she doesn't add anything else - says, "Don't you want to hear about it?"

This time she skips the _Mmph_ in favor of a groan. " 's the middle of the bloody night! Tell me in the morning."

He props himself up on his elbow. "But I'll have forgot it by then."

Most of her response is lost to the pillow, but he catches a few of her favorite curses. She rolls onto her back and scrubs her hands over her face with a begrudging, "All right, I'm listening."

"You were getting married," he says, "but you were still Dylan. And the bride looked like - I suppose it was Lilit, actually. Bovril was the ring bearer, and Dr. Barlow and Volger were witnesses."

"Very peculiar, aye," she says, yawning. "That all?"

He was right: the details are already melting away, liquid through a sieve, leaving only a few fragmented strange moments. "Well, I was trying to stop it," he says. As to _why_ he had been trying to stop a wedding in a stolen walker... with a saber... It had made perfect sense in the dream, of course.

"Did you?"

"Yes," he says, although he has a suspicion that he woke up before he got to that part.

"Good for you," she says, tugging the blanket up over her shoulders, yawning again. "I'd hate to be married to a girl."

He studies the way the faint starlight catches the curves of her face, the shape of her body beneath the blanket. "Since we're both awake..." he says, touching her hip.

She opens one eye just far enough to give him a dark glare, and her "_No_," is very definitive.

He sighs and resettles himself on his side of the bed, trying to get comfortable enough to fall back to sleep. Perhaps this time he'll dream of something more pleasant.

His own wedding, for example. That had been lovely, and no one had crashed it – although that, too, he remembers mainly in fragmentary snapshots. He can't help it; it's an overwhelming sort of occasion.

He does remember, very clearly, holding Deryn's hands in his as the priest spoke, and looking into her bright blue eyes and brighter smile.

Wondering, the whole while, if it was possible to die of happiness.

"Deryn?"

She positively growls. "_What_?"

He gathers her close and plants a kiss on her shoulder. "_Ich liebe dich_."

"Mmph, love you too," she says, snuggling back into him, "but don't wake me up again."


	64. a thousand words

**Note:** I feel kinda bad for doubling up on requests, but they're for the exact same thing, so…

The original request from FCgrl: _Why don't you sort of pick this one up? By that I mean, have a scene__where Deryn actually sketches Alek, ya know? _

And from SavySB823: _Now I have to request an actual "Deryn-sketching-Alek moment."_

.

.

.

She could draw him from memory.

Deryn's known Alek less than two months, and she can see his face clear as anything when she closes her eyes. The line of his jaw, the curve of his chin. The indentation in the center of his upper lip. The slope of his nose. The dark reddish wings of his eyebrows against his pale skin. The curl of hair that never stays properly brushed back. The shape of his eyes, the sweep of his eyelashes. The perfect seashell spiral of his ears… which are _not_ too big, no matter what he thinks.

Once in a while (oh, fine, all the barking time) she catches herself staring at him. Memorizing, without consciously trying. She supposes that, in the back of her mind, she thinks he's going to disappear on her again, and she wants to have him fixed in her brain before he does.

But it's going to get her secret discovered, so she needs to stop.

It's partly out of that desperation that she asks him if she can do a sketch. Partly. The other part is boredom and a wish to draw something other than fabricated animals and Clanker engines.

He's surprised, but he agrees after some dithering, and one morning when she's supposed to be delivering breakfast, she has him sit on a chair in his stateroom, where the light hits him clear and fair. She plunks herself on the edge of his bed and turns to a fresh page in her sketchbook.

"Don't just _sit_ there," she says. "This isn't a royal portrait, your archdukeness – only a sketch."

"What should I do, then?"

She thinks about that. She wants him to look like himself, not stiff and princely. "Talk to Bovril," she suggests, pointing at the beastie with the end of her pencil. "Tell it about your Stormwalker."

"Stormwalker?" Bovril asks, perking up, always eager for new knowledge.

Alek's eyebrows lift. He glances at Bovril, then at Deryn. "Well. All right." Back to Bovril. "I suppose I shall begin with the engines."

He talks, Bovril listens, and Deryn sketches. She works fast, performing the small magic of turning pencil marks into something alive, trying to trap him on the page. Her awareness narrows down to lines and shapes and planes and shadows and highlights, and his voice fades to a pleasant background tune.

She draws him leaning forward in his chair, gesturing to the loris on the table beside him. His hands are measuring out the distance of some mechanical something-or-the-other, and his face is alight with confidence and joy.

He really did love that hunk of metal.

She shades in the parts that need shading, rubs out some stray lines, adds a hint of background. Then she pauses – just for a moment – to see if he's tired of being an artist's model yet.

"In battle the screen is closed as far as possible," he's saying, tracing lines in the air. He seems to have forgotten she's there at all.

Deryn holds her breath. Quickly, discreetly, flips to a new page.

This time she does a portrait. Not a royal one; just one that she'll be able to take out later, when all of this is over and she's at home with naught but memories and stories no one will believe.

She draws half of it from memory, hurried and rushed, so scared is she that he'll look up while she's staring at him and see the truth stamped right across her barking face.

This isn't a sketch of a friend. This is a drawing of a loved one. She'll have to hide it – somehow. But it'll be worth the risk, she thinks, to have a memory to hold close.

"Are you done?" he asks.

She half yelps. "Blisters! Don't startle me like that. Aye, I'm done."

He rises and takes a step in her direction. "May I see it?"

Deryn darts a panicked glance down at the portrait sketch. She could've saved herself the trouble and written _Lately I've been daydreaming about you kissing me_ on the page instead. Barking spiders.

And yet, if she flips back to the sketch she actually meant for him to see, he'll notice and wonder why. Alek's fairly oblivious sometimes, but that'll be hard to miss.

Desperation makes her clever. "What's that Bovril's got?" she asks quickly, nodding at the beastie behind Alek.

He looks over his shoulder; she flips the page back; and when he turns to face her again, saying, "What are you talking about?" she makes a show of tearing the safe sketch out of her book.

Meanwhile, Bovril sits up a bit straighter and tilts its little head peevishly, as if it's offended to be used as a distraction.

"Never mind, then," she says, shrugging and handing the drawing over. Shuts her sketchbook and holds it behind her back. "There you are, your archdukeness. A proper masterpiece."

"Thank you," he says, automatically, politely, then stops and really looks at it. His eyes widen. "Oh."

And that's all he says for a great long nerve-wracking while, as he holds the sketch in the light and studies it carefully.

She starts to fidget. Maybe that sketch wasn't as safe as she thought? Or maybe he's thinking it looks awful. Maybe he's about to tell her to stick to drawing Huxleys and Clanker engines.

Finally he looks up. A smile touched with sadness flickers across his face.

It's that sort of look which makes her wish he knew she was a girl, because then she could push the hair (the one curl that never stays in place) back from his forehead and put a gentle kiss there, and carry some of the sadness away from him.

But maybe she's done that anyway.

"This is wonderful, Dylan," he says sincerely, holding out his hand for her to shake. His fingers are warm. "Thank you."

Deryn manages a lopsided grin. "Anytime."


	65. dead shattered

**Note:** The original request from LittleKittyShaoMao: _I'd personally really like to see a shell shocked Deryn, with Alek around of __course._

Of course! Nothing says "World War I" like shell shock in the trenches, after all. Now, as to _why_ are they're down in the trenches… heck if I know! But here 'tis. :D

.

.

.

The shell hits almost directly on top of them.

Dirt and mud flies up in wild showers; the concussive force knocks Alek backwards into the wall of the trench. For a moment the universe is nothing but sound and fury, and then he comes back to himself – dizzy and panicking and half-choking on bitter smoke.

His first thought is – "Dylan!"

Because his friend was beside him before the shell hit, and now he can't see the other boy. Of course, he can't see much of anything just presently; his eyes are burning and tearing, his ears are ringing, and the trench has become a churning pit of chaos.

He coughs, spitting out muddy grit, and shakes his head, trying desperately to regain his bearings. Men are dead, men are dying, men are racing to the guns for retaliation.

And Dylan is fetched up against a splintered ladder two yards away, unmoving.

"Dylan!" Alek calls, voice sounding strange to his half-deafened ears. He gets his feet under him again and hurries, slipping and scrambling through the mud, to fall to his knees by the side of his friend.

"Dylan!" he says again, putting a hand on the other boy's shoulder. For a moment he fears that Dylan is dead, but then he sees that the midshipman is breathing, albeit too quickly and too shallowly.

Another shell bursts, farther down the line this time. Alek can't help but duck, and looks over his shoulder even though he knows there's nothing to see except more brutal, ugly death. Then he looks back at Dylan, whose color is grey beneath the spatters of mud.

He gives his friend a shake. "Dylan! Are you all right? Are you injured?"

Dylan jerks under his hand, sitting up against the ladder, coughing and retching. His eyes are open, but glassy and unfocused; he seems to be staring a thousand yards away.

He has blue eyes.

Alek notices this for the first time. It's a stray detail that his mind catches on, then skitters over in favor of larger, more important things.

Such as the fact that Dylan is not speaking, only staring. One of his odd phrases comes to Alek: _dead shattered_. Yes. He looks dead shattered.

Alek pushes a shaking hand through his hair. Perhaps Dylan's been wounded – he must have been wounded. He could be bleeding to death right now. Alek hesitates a moment, then begins to unfasten the midshipman's shirt to check.

Cold, dirty fingers grab his hands, stopping him. "No," Dylan gasps, shuddering, although his eyes are still in that ghastly unfocused stare and he's moving as though underwater.

"You're wounded– "

"No," he says again, voice catching, body curling up on itself. Suddenly Dylan is wracked with great, terrible shudders, and Alek instinctively grabs the other boy and holds him close, trying to share warmth and comfort and _life_.

A soldier runs by, shouting. It's a small noise beneath the cacophony of the guns and shells, but Dylan startles, attempting to pull away and run. Alek holds on to his friend through sheer determination – he can't run, where can he go - he'll only be killed -

Dylan fights against him. "Let go!" he exclaims. Voice high and panicked, almost like a girl's. "Let me go!"

Alek does not. Instead he finds himself murmuring nonsense, over and over, snatches of songs he hasn't thought of since he was in the nursery, ridiculous things like "It will be all right," although how any of this could be all right is beyond him. He thinks Dylan may be crying; he knows that he himself is.

They stay huddled in the trench as the shelling and shooting gradually ceases. Quiet descends, but it's the quiet of a tomb. There's no peace in it. Only death.

Not letting go of his friend, Alek wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. He hates this war. Hates it fiercely.

"Alek," Dylan says after a bit, uneven. He takes a slow, steady breath. "I'm all right, aye?"

He sounds all right. He sounds like himself again. Alek cautiously lets go and shifts away, giving Dylan space. "What happened?"

Dylan's color remains poor. The ghastly stare, at least, is gone, though his eyes are haunted, and he seems to be having trouble settling on something to look at. "I don't know. It was just… too barking much, I suppose."

"Yes," Alek says. He realizes his hands are shaking. Now that he's certain that Dylan is fine, panic is threatening to swallow him. "Yes, it was."

Dylan grabs his hands. Tightly. "Thank you," his friend says, meeting his eyes.

"_Bitte_," Alek says, and holds on to this small token of humanity in the middle of hell.


	66. mysteries of life

**Note:** My alarm went off and my first conscious thought of the day was _Darwinist kids..."birds and bees" conversations… good luck, Alek_. Yeah. True story.

.

.

.

"That's not true," says Max, outraged.

Sophie shrugs, confident in her information. "Ask."

"I will!" Max gives her the best glare a six-year-old can. Calls: "_Papa -!_"

"Not _him_," Sophie groans. "Ask Mama!"

But it's too late. "Yes?" their father says, appearing in the doorway.

"Sophie says we got made when you and Mama shared life threads, but that's dead gross. And how can _people_ do that anyway?"

Papa looks at Max. He looks at Sophie. Then he rubs his forehead, mutters something in German, and leaves, saying, "Go ask your mother."

"Told you," Sophie says to Max, who scowls.


	67. oblivious

Newkirk doesn't know what he should do. Say something? Say nothing? It's a bloody fearful matter he's getting himself into here; it could wholly upset his life on the _Leviathan_, which he loves… despite the horrid creatures, great and small, that come with.

No, that's not true – he does know what he should do. He ought not to say anything. He ought to shut his eyes again and stay well enough away from all of it. Full stop.

But he can't. Once he figures it out, curiosity eats at him for days – and something else, something like fascination. Something strangely akin to jealousy.

And then, just like always, he goes and does something barking stupid.

It's breakfast, and he's on his way back from taking food to the three Clankers who don't rate fancy staterooms, when he sees Mr. Sharp. The other midshipman is finishing the morning's deliveries, too, and is just bidding goodbye to Alek. Er, the prince.

Newkirk can't hear what the two of them are saying, but he watches Sharp carefully. He notices the way the middy smiles. And he notices the way that smile lingers, tucked up in the corners of Sharp's eyes.

"Mr. Sharp!" Newkirk calls, hurrying a bit to catch up. Sharp slows and Newkirk draws even. "How's the, er, the prince?"

Sharp shrugs. "Well enough. Tired of being under lock and key, but I can't blame him for that."

Newkirk makes a noise of agreement... and then he does the something barking stupid.

He grabs Sharp's arm and forces the other boy to a stop.

"You like him," Newkirk says softly. Says, not asks. He's suddenly certain he already knows the answer even as he wishes he hadn't said anything at all.

But he can't take the words back. They slide under the noise of the ship, deadly and dangerous, and hit home. Sharp blanches. "Aye, h-he - we're friends, of course we get on -"

Newkirk shakes his head. Inwardly he's telling himself _What are you doing? Let it be!_ Good advice; smart thing to do. But… he can't. "No. I mean... More than that."

Sharp says nothing, but he has the look of a trapped animal: helpless and panicking for it.

"It's all right if you do," Newkirk hurries to say, stomach sinking, trying to fix a mistake that's past mending. Sharp's his friend; he owes the boy his life; what happens behind closed doors is no one's business anyhow. "With _me_, that is. Well – it isn't really, but – I won't give you hell about it. After all, you saved my life."

"Twice," Sharp says, grinning. His voice is a weak croak, however, and the grin is a sickly, half-hearted thing.

"Right, yes, er, twice. I just wanted to be certain of... where everyone stands," Newkirk says, feeling like a perfect ass. Sharp seems shattered. _Should have left it alone_, he berates himself. What's it harm? – except this is war, and they're fighting the Clankers, and it could harm a great many people indeed. "I'm sorry to - to have mentioned it."

"No," Sharp says. He takes a breath, exhales heavily, and then grimaces. "Blisters, what a mess… I'm only wondering how it is you noticed before _he_ did."

"Oh," Newkirk says, jolted out his self-conscious panic. He thinks about that for a moment. So maybe it's not as bad as he was fearing, if Alek –er, the prince, doesn't know.

Still, Sharp looks right awful, and he's clearly waiting for an answer beyond _oh_. Newkirk does his best to come up with a clever response so he can pretend he isn't the world's grandest idiot. Something one of the boffins once said (he's almost certain) pops to mind. Hoping he's got it right, hoping for restored levity and camaraderie and the end of this damned _awkwardness_, Newkirk says, "Well, he _is_ royalty. They always marry their cousins, don't they?"

The other middy's sickly grin flickers back into place, slightly stronger this time, although touched with something Newkirk can't (and doesn't want to) name. "Aye, that's true enough."

"I won't tell," Newkirk adds, realizing he hasn't said that yet. An accusation to the captain about this sort of thing could get Sharp tossed off the ship, after all. "The prince or - or anyone else. Unless you want me to...?"

Sharp turns positively green. "Barking spiders! No!"

Newkirk shuffles his boots and rubs the back of his neck. "Oh. Aye. Thought not."

"No," Sharp says, er, sharply. He leans forward and points a warning finger at Newkirk's face. "And don't you bloody _ever_ tell him, or next time I'll leave your bum to drown!"

Newkirk nods absently – until the words sink in. Then he sputters, indignant. " _'Next time'_? Next time we're attacked by Germans with a – with a whatever sort of cannon that was, you mean, and I'm stranded aloft because my crewmate was too busy barking _fencing_ w-with..."

He stumbles over the last word and trails to an uncomfortable stop, foot firmly in his mouth again as Sharp gives him a pained and worried look. Because, that day - it wasn't really about _fencing_, was it?

Well.

Newkirk swallows. Stands straighter. Resolves not to be so sodding stupid.

"Next time," he says, nodding crisply. "Right you are, Mr. Sharp."


	68. interior design

**Note:** This was inspired by a photo I saw on the Konopiste Castle website. (It's a museum these days – the Czech government seized it from the Hohenberg family after the war. Princess Sophie von Hohenberg filed a lawsuit in 2000 to get it back. Good luck with that, Your Serene Highness!)

.

.

.

"Get rid of them?" Alek echoes, surprised. "Why on earth would I get rid of my father's hunting trophies?"

Deryn bites down on an exasperated groan. "Only because the entire barking room is covered in them, maybe?"

He looks around, as if he's never stopped to notice that this otherwise lovely part of Konopischt castle is bristling wall-to-wall with carefully mounted antlers. And this is only the _one_ room: Alek's da had been mad for hunting, when he wasn't getting on the wrong sides of emperors, and all three stories and all four wings are stuffed full of the evidence.

Now Alek's inherited the whole lot, and if Deryn has her way, the trophies will be one remembrance left behind.

"Not the _entire_ room. But why does it even matter?" he asks.

"It doesn't," she says, "unless you want me spending longer than five seconds here. Blisters, Alek, it's pure sodding _creepy_, having this many dead animals around!"

He puts his hands on his hips, princely and amused. "It's no less unsettling than all of those living fabrications that you Darwinists employ. Indeed, if you ask me, those are much worse than a few antlers. You are simply not used to them."

There's some truth to that, she's sure. Every aristocrat in Britain probably has scores of hunting trophies hanging about their estates. She wouldn't know; Konopischt is the only castle she's wandered through freely.

But the hunting trophies are still bloody disgusting. Fabs are one thing – they're bred for what they become, be it an airship or a fine leather jacket. Each of these trophies, however, mark a living animal killed purely for sport, and it turns her stomach, thinking about that.

She rolls her eyes. "Aye, and I'm not _going_ to get used to them, because you're going to pack them away."

"I certainly will not. This is my home and I shall do as I please," he says – which would be absolutely insufferable, if he didn't have that gleam in his eyes that tells her he's only winding her up.

Well, two of them can play _that_ barking game. "I'll move back to London, then," she says, stepping closer and putting her hands on her own hips.

"Excellent. Please do. I'm sure I'll have no trouble finding a young lady who adores hunting trophies." He gives her a wicked grin, obviously proud of himself for that sally – until he sees she's no longer smiling. His expression instantly changes to one of concern. "Deryn, I didn't mean –"

She hides her triumph (he's so barking easy to fool) and says, "I _suppose_ I might be able to forgive you if you get rid of those trophies."

To his credit, she's not fooling him anymore. His eyes narrow and the grin reappears. "Hmm. I might, except I have yet to hear a compelling argument why I should."

"Barking spiders, Alek!" she exclaims, breaking into a smile as well, for all that she'd like to give the _Dummkopf_ a good smack. "They're _antlers_, not wallpaper!"

His gaze flicks around the room again, resettling on her. "That's true enough. The walls will look very empty without them, however."

"So I'll draw some sketches and pin them up until we find something better. Though anything's better than antlers. Besides - a few years on, we don't want the sodding things scaring the children, do we?"

"Children?" he repeats, his grin softening into something infinitely more tender.

"Aye, they're a bit like lorises - clingy and repeat your words a lot - only you don't hatch them –"

He stops her talking with a kiss. It begins as one, anyway – his lips pressed against hers, his hands drawing her in close. It goes on for a rather long while, however, and by the time she remembers that they're supposed to be discussing proper wall hangings, her shirt is half rucked up and his jacket's off. To say nothing of where his hands have gone.

She leans back, heart pounding and knees a squick more wobbly than normal, and gives him an arch look. "You mean for us to start on the children sometime soon, then?"

"Absolutely. This very moment, if not -" He sucks in a breath as she lets her own hands wander south. "God's wounds - If n-not sooner."

"Fine by me, love," she says, "but first –"

"_Some_ of them," he concedes, interrupting her. "I'll remove _some_ of them."

"Aye, that's all I wanted," she says cheerfully, and kisses him again.


	69. possibilities

**Note:** The original request from Rose Gilmore: _I'd love to see something like __"the 5 times Dylan Sharp almost became Deryn, and the one time he did"_

Somehow that turned into… this. I think it's pretty close. :)

_._

_._

_._

**Five Times Dylan Sharp Didn't Become Deryn**

.

.

.

**I. Not Through Injury**

.

.

.

.

Dylan collapses.

Alek belatedly tries to catch him; he can't.

Dylan hits the ground beside the ruined _Express_. Makes an animal noise of pain. One hand flies to his shoulder. "Bloody hurts," he gasps.

Alek crouches beside him. "Are you –"

Dylan's eyes roll back. He goes limp.

"Bloody," Bovril says. "Hurt."

Alek's hand on Dylan's jacket comes away bright crimson.

Alarmed, on the lookout for German and Ottoman soldiers, Alek peels the sodden clothing away. He must stop the bleeding -

He freezes.

His fingers red against white skin. His face coloring scarlet.

The world tilts and spins madly.

.

.

.

**II. Not Because Of Blackmail**

.

.

.

"I'd hoped to avoid this," Volger says.

Dylan blanches. "Don't. _Please_ –"

"What's going on?" Alek asks, frowning. Neither one answers – they're too preoccupied with glaring. He looks at Captain Hobbes, who's equally perplexed.

"_Mr_. Sharp is nothing of the sort," Volger tells the captain. Cool. Remorseless. Not taking his eyes from Dylan's. "This is a girl."

Alek goes cold. _No_, he thinks. Then – _Of course_, he thinks.

"Good God, sir, that's quite a claim," Hobbes says. "Mr. Sharp! Is this true?"

Dylan ignores the captain. He (no; _she_) looks furious. "Sodding Clanker bastard!" she says to Volger – who smiles.

.

.

.

**III. Not With An Epiphany**

.

.

.

There's nothing, specifically, that finally does it.

Dylan brings him breakfast that morning, as has become usual. Stays and talks, as usual. Unashamedly skylarking… also as usual. Given the current troubles in his life, Alek is simply grateful for a few minutes of uncomplicated pleasantries with his friend.

"That's it, then," Dylan eventually says, reluctant. "Back to work."

Alek makes a final joke as Dylan exits with the tray - "the most appalling room service," he tells the midshipman, who laughs.

Bovril chuckles too. Says, "_Mr._ Sharp."

And suddenly it all _fits_.

"God's wounds," Alek exclaims, astonished. "You're a girl!"

.

.

.

**IV. Not Posthumously**

.

.

.

A slow crawl of steel-gray sea not far below them.

The mist this morning is heavy; the cold air tastes thickly of salt.

Still under guard, Alek and his men have been allowed to bear witness. Pay their last respects. He stands silently, heart as heavy as the mist.

Captain Hobbes says a prayer. Heads bow. Alek crosses himself. Closes his eyes.

The smack of the shrouded body against the water kills something in his soul.

"Dylan was a true friend," Alek tells Volger later. "I will never know another like him."

After a moment Volger sighs and says, "Her."

.

.

.

**V. Not By Accident**

.

.

.

Dylan's taking too long.

Alek's waiting outside for the other boy, who insists on changing clothes privately. But he's restless to leave for the Hotel Hagia Sophia and retrieve his missing scroll.

He opens the door. Impatient. "How long does it –"

And stops.

Dylan hastily turns, clutching at the open shirtfront, covering the soft pale skin beneath. Much too late.

Alek should excuse himself and leave immediately, but he stays frozen to his place, realizing what he's just seen. No. It's not possible. And yet…

"Dylan?" he asks. Shocked.

"I told you to bloody wait outside!" he – _she_ – says.

.

.

.

…**And The One Time He Did**

.

.

.

The look on his face – oh, Lord, it cuts clean through her. Surprise and confusion and betrayal and hurt flash through his eyes, and she can feel the cold panic rising up in her chest.

In this one last, endless moment after her revelation and before his reaction, she sees with a hard and bitter clarity that she ought to have told him.

Before it mattered so barking much. Before they found themselves _here_.

Maybe it won't be so awful, she thinks, desperate – maybe he'll have pity on his friend.

But the truth is out, and she isn't Dylan anymore.


	70. whether or not you should

**Note:** People really wanna see some Varlow.

The original request from Music Antoinette: _I also like interaction__between Volger and Dr. Barlow._

From Unique Reflection: _As for my request, anything Barlow/Volger._

And from SignedAnon: _I'd really like a Volger/Barlow fic._

.

.

.

_Nothing comes from nothing_

_Nothing ever could_

_- "Something Good" from The Sound of Music_

_._

_._

_._

Volger is not entirely displeased with recent events.

In a perfect world, of course, he would not still be aboard the _Leviathan_. Aleksandar, at least, is safely gone for Istanbul. Hopefully the boy will listen to Klopp and Bauer, both sensible men, and slip quietly into anonymity.

Doubtful. But to be hoped.

Meanwhile, Volger and Hoffman have become simultaneously more and less valuable to Captain Hobbes. Less, because they are no longer attached to a prince. More, because they are now the captain's only access to the Stormwalker engines.

All in all, a tolerable position. He is not above admitting that it is improved by frequent visits from a certain lady doctor.

"Apologies for the late tea, but Mr. Newkirk has been run quite ragged," Dr. Barlow says, setting the tray of tea things on his stateroom's desk and setting herself into the chair before it.

Volger never stands for her entrances. His one concession to her presence now is to put away the papers he was studying when she arrived. It serves the dual purpose of keeping them from her sight, and keeping them clear of any tea-related mishaps.

Although a spill seems unlikely. She serves the tea, every movement precise and economical. A scientist's grace. It should be ill-suited to a woman, but he cannot complain.

"There is far too much yeoman's work for only one midshipman," she continues. She frowns. "A tragedy in so many ways to have lost Mr. Sharp."

"Perhaps he escaped capture," Volger says.

"Or perhaps they killed him," Dr. Barlow says, clearly displeased by the idea, "and were unable to identify the body."

Volger could make several choice comments about the identification of "Mr." Sharp's body. He makes none of them. Instead, he says, "I am certain he shall turn up eventually. He does seem to have remarkable luck."

Troublemakers often do.

"Quite true." Her expression is just amused enough to pass for a smile. "Perhaps he has deserted the Air Service in favor of the prince's."

This is not amusing. This exact thought has bothered Volger for several days running, ever since Sharp disappeared. He has been tasked with delivering Alek to the imperial throne – something he cannot do if the boy has entangled himself with a common Darwinist girl.

He trusts Alek to hold true to his proper place in society. He does not, however, trust the girl, and he does not doubt for a moment that, given the right circumstances, she will throw all of her charm and feminine trickery at His Highness – who will be woefully unprepared to defend against it.

And God knows there's precedent in Alek's family for marrying down.

"Mr. Sharp seems to place too high a value on the Air Service," Volger says, dismissively, with a touch of scorn, as if the idea is ridiculous.

"Oh, I agree," Dr. Barlow says. She takes a delicate drink of her tea. "It's only that they seem to have become rather fast friends."

"Indeed," Volger says, instead of the many other responses he could give. He takes a sip of his tea and finds it not to his taste. One would suppose that Darwinists could fabricate a more palatable drink, but that seems to be beyond their art.

"You were friends with the late Archduke, I understand."

"Yes. For many years."

"You must have held him in great esteem," the doctor says.

There is no doubt who she means, but he asks anyway. "The Archduke?"

She lifts an eyebrow.

"Indeed I did," Volger says, abandoning his half-hearted attempt at obfuscation through the appearance of stupidity. "He would have made an excellent emperor, had the Germans allowed it."

"And he obviously valued you equally well," she says, "or you would not be here."

Volger inclines his head.

She smoothes the skirt of her dress over her knees. "Still, such a sacrifice to ask of anyone. Your family must miss you terribly."

He smiles; to the point at last. "Do not concern yourself there, Doctor. I have no family alive today."

"None at all? No wife, no children? Goodness." She meets his eyes, somewhat spoiling her impression of guilelessness in so doing. "Forgive me, Count, if I misspoke."

"There is nothing to forgive," he says, setting down his tea and resolving to have nothing further to do with the revolting stuff. "We have hardly had the time to exchange social niceties."

"We have not," she agrees. "But see – we are rectifying that lack at this very moment."

He makes a noise of polite assent. "I was married, once, if you would know. It seems another lifetime." But he does not want to discuss that other lifetime, and he shifts slightly. Resettling; regrouping for the attack. "I confess that I am now curious about _your_ family, Dr. Barlow. I imagine they were less than pleased at your sudden and prolonged departure."

"Hm, yes." She flicks her skirts, a small frown appearing and disappearing in the same heartbeat. "Mr. Barlow understands the importance of this venture. He can hardly complain about my absence with the fate of nations hanging in the balance, can he?"

"Indeed," Volger says. "Were I in his place, I would be tempted anyway."

She smiles – as he intended. It is both a compliment and a diversion. He adjusts the teacup in its saucer, nudging the handle a fraction left, and strikes: "And your children?"

"Joan and Thomas are very young," she says after a brief pause. Her voice is perfectly level, but her spine has stiffened. "And well cared for by their nanny."

A hit. He makes no reaction – merely a neutral, "Of course."

She studies him; he returns the attention with a frank assessment of his own. He estimates her age at thirty, or close to it. Nearly two decades his junior; a young, pretty wife and mother; and yet she has already proven herself to be a remarkably clever adversary.

Although perhaps _adversary_ is incorrect.

He is not entirely displeased with current events.

"You surprise me, Count," she says at last. "I had not thought it to be commonly known."

"A simple deduction," he says, metaphorically waving off the comment. "You are young, and married – relatively recently, I believe? Yes - it would be an oddity if you did not have children. I would certainly think less of Mr. Barlow."

The smile touches the corners of her eyes only, but it is there.

He leans slightly forward in his chair. "It must be difficult to leave one's children, even for such an important venture."

"Or to turn them loose into the streets of an unknown city?" she asks drily, eyebrow raising. The dart hits home; they are matched point-for-point.

"Indeed," he says, choosing to ignore the worry. Alek is clever himself, if inexperienced. The boy will be fine until Volger can rejoin him.

"It appears to me, Count," she says briskly, moving on, "that these are urgent times. Urgent actions must be taken, and new alliances forged. You agree, I am sure."

The question, unspoken, shivers the air between them. She holds his gaze for a long moment. He keeps his expression carefully schooled as he weighs the potential consequences… and the potential benefits.

No. He is not displeased at all.

"I believe that I do," he says. "Doctor."

"Excellent," she says. To seal their unspoken bargain, she extends one gloved hand; he takes it and brushes a dry kiss across its back. Formal. Polite.

A prelude.


	71. what's in a name

She sits on the ground beside him. Still lying on his back, he smiles over at her, amused by the small _oof_ she makes as she lowers herself awkwardly down, delighted by the fact that it's their unborn child causing this unaccustomed ungainliness.

"Careful, or we shall never get you up again without the hoist," he says, laying his wrench aside.

"Sod off, Clanker," she says, one hand on the curve of her stomach and a smile glowing in the corners of her eyes. Apropos of nothing, she asks, "D'you know what your name means?"

"It's the Slavic form of Alexander," he says, wiping his hands off on the rag tucked into the waist of his work trousers, "which was Latinized from the original Greek Alexandros, 'defender of men'."

She makes no response, aside from some muttering of the "knows all _that_, but…" variety.

He pretends not to have heard. "What?"

She pretends not to have spoken. "Nothing."

"I ought to have been named Maximilian, after Franz Joseph's brother. But my father wanted to show the Slav nationalists that he was sympathetic – not that it worked." He slides out from beneath the unmounted engine and leverages himself upright. The cursed thing will go on malfunctioning (he's no master of mechaniks) whether or not he has a pleasant chat with his wife. "What about your name? I don't believe I've ever asked."

She shrugs. "It's Welsh. Something to do with birds, I think."

"You don't know?" he asks, curious. He shifts so that he's sitting beside her, their backs to the wall, facing his half-rebuilt Stormwalker. A labor of love. Two years ago, he would have imagined working on it the greatest thrill possible.

Now, he's looking forward to being far too preoccupied with a son or daughter to have any time for this collection of rusty gears.

"Not all of us are encyclopedias, love," she says, grinning at him. "Besides, it's Welsh."

"And you don't know what it means? Aren't you Scots?" he asks, metaphorically tweaking her nose, and doing it quite on purpose.

Predictably, her temper flashes over: "Aye, and that's why I don't speak bloody _Welsh_!"

He laughs, and she half-heartedly punches his arm as she realizes that he's been teasing. His feelings are hardly injured; he pulls her onto his lap and kisses her soundly, one hand resting on that smooth rounding of her stomach.

There's a kick and flutter beneath his hand – firm enough to make him startle, even after months of it – and he begins to understand what she's on about. He looks down at the curve under his fingers. "Names are important."

She puts her hand over his and laces their fingers together. Her voice is light: "Is that why you have so barking many?"

He thinks about it. It's a bit more complicated than that, but… "Well, yes."

She murmurs the entire long string into his ear. He shivers at the warmth of her breath and the small intimacy of the words, and squeezes her hand more tightly.

"I'm all for tradition," she adds (a lie if ever there was one), "but I think we should give that up, aye?"

He grimaces. He wouldn't even know where to start, and at this point, burdening a child with the names of a dead empire seems cruel. "All things considered - I'm more than happy to let it end with me."

"Mm," she says, agreeing without agreeing, and kisses him. He sinks into her warmth, into the electricity between them, into the simple fierce joy of this life. His wife, his child – everything he could ever have wanted; why did he once think he needed more?

After a minute the baby kicks again, harder this time, and she breaks the kiss with a brief curse and a vaguely resentful, "Sodding wee thing just elbowed my liver."

"Are you certain it wasn't your spleen?"

"I'm certain it wasn't my bladder."

"And I'm certainly grateful for _that_," he says, earning a laugh. He smoothes a stray lock of golden hair away from her face and kisses her forehead. Gently. "We shall need to settle on a name soon, you know."

She shrugs. "It doesn't matter."

He wants to ask, _Then why did we have this discussion?_ but opts for the somewhat wiser, "It doesn't?"

"Oh, aye," she says cheerily, dropping a kiss on his cheek and rising, awkward and ungainly and lovelier than ever. "I've already decided: Sophie for a girl, Franz for a boy."


	72. the last two chapters

**Note:** The original request from ThornyRose: _The first thing that I would love to see is a sickfic. The second is …. a childbirth fic._

ThornyRose, darlin', you've been very patient, and I hope you like this. The sickfic is coming. I promise! :D

.

.

.

**_If pregnancy were a book, they would cut the last two chapters._**

**_- Nora Ephron_**

.

.

.

1. In Which Deryn Regrets The Guest List

.

.

.

"You are making rather too much of a fuss. This is a perfectly natural event – indeed, the most natural. Women have endured this for millennia. I myself have survived it five times already, without half so many carryings-on."

The speech fails to impress Deryn.

"Whose bloody brilliant idea was it to invite the lady boffin?" she demands, breathing hard, glaring daggers at Dr. Barlow (while her ma, off to the side, assures the midwife it's really all right and please don't leave).

"Yours, I believe," Dr. Barlow says, unperturbed. "Now, if it's not too much trouble, stop complaining and _push_."

.

.

.

2. In Which Alek Regrets Being On The Guest List

.

.

.

"May I leave?" asks Alek, who is feeling rather overcome by all of this.

"No," Deryn declares, gripping his hand tightly.

He attempts to pull free. "But I'm entirely superfluous -"

"No."

"- I shall just be outside the room –"

"_No._"

"- It's against tradition –"

"_**No!**_"

"Could I at least fetch you something to drink?" – his last, desperate plea for release. He looks over at the midwife, who shrugs.

Panting, sweating, in pain, Deryn still manages to hold him fast. "You helped put the baby in," she says bluntly, "so now you can barking help get it out!"

.

.

.

**Bonus Note:** I'd like to give a shout-out to my mom, who did it (twice) the old-fashioned way – no epidural. She's pretty tough. I asked her what the actual labor was like: did she scream, cuss anyone out… you know, the beloved clichés.

She said, "No. I was too busy having a baby." And I tend to think Deryn would agree.


	73. the water's fine

"Where did you learn to swim?" Alek asks, treading water.

Deryn grins, and he knows he won't get a real answer. Indeed - "Glasgow," is all she says.

"I suppose some sort of fabricated duck taught you."

She laughs. Makes a _quack_ noise that sounds nothing like a duck. Disappears beneath the water.

He turns around in place, looking for her. It's a while before she pops up again; he feels slightly relieved.

"My ma taught me, ninny," she says. "Where did _you_?"

"Konopischt."

"Bless you!"

He gives her a dark look; she grins; he splashes her; she kisses him.


	74. same time every year

**Note:** At the very beginning of Leviathan (June 28th), Alek mentions that his birthday will be soon – but Behemoth goes all the way to October, and… no birthday. Thus we have this story.

Many thanks to my friends on the Clankwinists LJ comm for the stimulating and scintillating discussion. :D

.

.

.

"Blisters, you look glum this morning," Dylan announces, setting the breakfast tray on the desk. "What's happened?"

There are many replies that Alek could make.

_I've allowed myself to be retaken as a prisoner of war, out of friendship and a sense of affection for a fabricated flying whale. _

_With every moment, I'm moving farther away from my chances at the Imperial and Apostolic Crown. _

_I want to end the war, but I don't know if it's even possible._

Instead, he gives the midshipman a rueful sigh and says, "You're going to laugh."

"Not unless it's pure dead funny," Dylan assures him, grinning. Then his expression sobers. "Come off it, Clanker – I'm your friend. I won't laugh. Promise."

"Very well." Alek looks at the (presumably napping) lump of perspicacious loris curled up on his bed; he could do without Bovril chortling and parroting this. "I forgot my birthday."

"Oh, aye? When was it?"

"July twenty-fourth."

Dylan's mouth twitches, but true to his word, the other boy doesn't laugh. He does, however, plunk himself down into the other chair in Alek's stateroom. "You forgot it, all right – it's October!"

"I know what month it is," Alek says, irritated. He'd awoken this morning with the thought blazed bright across his mind: _My birthday was nearly three months ago_. God's wounds, he's been sixteen for three months, and he hasn't even noticed.

Dylan clicks his tongue sympathetically. "Could be worse. You could have forgot until November. Just imagine how daft you'd feel then."

Alek hears the amusement under the sympathy and gives his friend a dark look. "I know _why_ I forgot. It's perfectly reasonable. We were trying to reach Switzerland – sleeping in shifts, traveling at odd hours, being hunted by the Germans – I barely knew whether it was day or night. And without my parents…"

He can't quite finish the sentence.

Quietly, without any mockery, Dylan says, "Aye."

Alek nods, throat constricting. Something of his sudden misery must show on his face, because his friend reaches out a hand. Alek clasps it. For a moment they sit there, silent, connected, and then Dylan clears his throat and pulls his hand away.

But Alek feels immeasurably better.

"You've been a bit busy since, too," Dylan adds.

Alek musters up a smile. "Yes."

The midshipman slouches back in his chair and gives Alek a calculating look. "So how are old are you, your archdukeness?"

"Sixteen."

Dylan is visibly startled by that. "Blisters! You're a year older than me!"

Alek raises an eyebrow. "Does that matter?"

"No." His friend grins – this time, with a hint of worry. "Fifteen's too young to be a middy, though, so don't tell anyone, aye?"

Perhaps _that's_ what Count Volger tried to blackmail Dylan with, back in Istanbul. Alek resolves to ask the man at some later point. "Of course not. When is your birthday?"

"June first," he says promptly. "Though I wish my ma had forgot this year – her present was pure dead awful."

Alek's mother had been warm and loving, full of soft words and gentle encouragement. He had always attempted to please her, even when it meant annoying sacrifices – like her insistence that he not train in real walkers until his sixteenth birthday.

Dylan's mother, it seems, is not so soft and gentle, and judging from comments the other boy has made, they hardly ever get on well. Alek finds this baffling and fascinating all at once. "Why? What did she give you?"

Unaccountably, Dylan freezes. "Um," he says after a curiously long pause. "It's – it's really not – I don't suppose it was _that_ horrible, I mean…"

There's a brisk rap on the door, and Dylan hops to his feet with alacrity. "That'll be Newkirk," he says, already halfway gone from the stateroom. "Enjoy your breakfast, your archdukeness, while I'm feeding those sodding bats."

Bemused, Alek can only blink at his friend's hasty departure. And what had thrown him so badly? Perhaps Dylan had been too embarrassed by his mother's gift to discuss it... but what could it have possibly been?

Alek decides the matter is none of his business, puts it out of his mind, and eats his breakfast.

It is more difficult, however, not to think of his parents. Talking about his birthday has brought back a swirl of memories: the half-formed plans for the celebration, his mother's hints about gifts, his father's insistence that they would be back from Sarajevo in plenty of time – that they could even travel to the seaside for his birthday, if Alek liked.

And the last telegraph message.

_Mama and I are very well…_

Alek had scarcely glanced at it.

…_this morning there is the big reception in Sarajevo…_

He'd thrown it away when he was done reading – simply tossed it into the bin without a second thought.

_Dearest love to you._

He had missed their funeral.

He realizes, with a sickening jolt, that he doesn't even know where they are buried. At Konopischt? In Vienna? Artstetten? And will he ever have the opportunity to pay his respects?

A small, warm weight clambers onto his back, claws tugging at his jacket, and then settles on his shoulder.

"_Guten Tag_," Bovril says.

Alek scratches the animal's head, and it makes a purring noise deep in its throat. "It's rather petty of me, isn't it," he says to the loris, "to regret a missed birthday when so much else has happened."

Bovril leans into his hand. "Regret," it says, eyes slitted in apparent pleasure.

"Indeed," Alek says. He sighs.

He doesn't see Dylan again until well after dinner, when the sky outside is already deep purple and specked with stars. The midshipman raps perfunctorily on his open door and then enters, bearing, of all things, two teacups and a glass bottle.

The bottle isn't large, and is mostly empty – there is perhaps enough liquid inside for three or four small cupfuls.

"Here, take the cups, aye?" Dylan says, holding out his hand. The teacups are swinging precariously by their handles, looped over Dylan's fingers.

Alek hastily takes the teacups from his friend and places them on the desk. Dylan sits in one of the chairs and sets the bottle beside the teacups. The glass clunks against the wood; the china cups rattle against one another.

"What's in that?" Alek asks, curious, taking his own seat.

"Cups," Bovril says, hopping on Dylan's shoulder.

With a wide grin, Dylan reaches out and waggles the bottle, making the dark, caramel-gold liquid slosh around. "Rum, of course. For a proper birthday toast."

Alek doesn't know why he allows himself to be surprised by any of the miracles, large or small, that Dylan so routinely performs. "God's wounds – where did you find _rum_?"

"Newkirk had it," Dylan says, uncorking the bottle. Bovril leans over, sniffs, and then paws at its nose in distaste. "Left over from that bum-rag Mr. Fitzroy. He was one of the middies tossed off the ship in London, before we started for Istanbul; just as well you never met him."

"Newkirk had it," Alek repeats, ferreting out the most salient detail, and Dylan nods. "How did _you_ get it?"

"Won it from him. The ninny – he should know not to play at cards. Least, not against _me_." Dylan gestures with the bottle of rum. "Come on, then. I haven't got a gift for you, but we can do this much. Give me your cup."

Alek picks up his cup and holds it out, letting the other boy fill it. Ridiculous, he thinks, looking down into the dark liquid, to be drinking rum from a teacup – three months after his birthday, no less.

Ridiculous. But also rather… fun.

He has had worse birthday celebrations.

"How d'you say it in Clanker?" Dylan asks.

"What?"

" 'Happy birthday', daftie."

"Happy birthday," Bovril repeats, curled around Dylan's neck.

"Ah." Alek gives his friend a half-smile. "_Alles Gute zum Geburtstag._"

Dylan lifts the bottle and says, "_Alles Gute zum Geburtstag_, Your Highness. And I won't let you barking forget the next one, aye?"

Alek raises his cup and clinks its edge against the glass. "_Danke schön, _Mr. Sharp," he says softly, and drinks.

.

.

.

**Note:** The real-life Princess Sophie von Hohenberg, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie's oldest child, was born on July 24, so I borrowed her day for Alek. And I'll be honest – although at the start of Leviathan Deryn's "barely fifteen", I picked her birth date mainly because it falls under the astrological sign of Gemini. ;)


	75. hey jealousy

**Note:** The original request from liesygirl: _Have you done one where Alek gets jealous?_

I have now! Let's see… I'm pretty sure this is in the same future!verse as "traditions" and "oh brother". But it doesn't really matter. :D

_._

_._

_._

On his first morning in Glasgow, Alek is awakened by someone hammering on his hotel room door and shouting, "Oi! Let's go, Clanker!"

He therefore begins his day with a smile – and by hastily throwing on enough clothes in which to decently answer the door. He retreats to the washroom and dresses more carefully while Deryn takes full advantage of the room service menu.

"I can't believe Ma won't let you stay with us," she says as they eat breakfast. "It's daft for you to pay so much for this place when Jaspert's room is sitting empty."

"It's all right," he says quickly. "I don't want to impose."

The thought of living – however temporarily – under the same roof as Deryn is both far too terrifying and too attractive. He supposes it's terrifying _because_ it's attractive.

She finishes her coffee and leans back in her chair, grinning at him across the table. She's wearing a dress (which in itself is much too attractive), but is otherwise unchanged. "Well, I'll keep at it. Meanwhile, we're going to be proper tourists today."

"That sounds very nice," he says. He says it to be polite. In reality, he would rather sit here and talk with her for a while longer. Perhaps two or three years. "How were you able to get away?"

"Left a note on my bed and climbed out the window. Blisters, I'm only winding you up!" she says, laughing at the look on his face. "I told Ma Volger would be here, that's how. Where is he, anyway?"

"Still in Vienna," Alek says, grimacing at the thought of that viper's nest, "trying to sort out what I can and cannot be. It's all politics now. He did successfully petition the emperor to make my mother's title hereditary."

"Having fun, then. Good for him." She lifts her teacup in a mocking salute to the absent wildcount. "Your ma was a duchess, so you're a duke now?"

"Yes. And I shall have to go back and continue to be a duke," he says. He will never be Emperor, but he is too important to fade away into peaceful obscurity. How he managed even this small escape continues to amaze him.

"But not for a while yet," Deryn says, and while she covers it by stealing a bite of his breakfast, there's an anxious note to her voice that makes him look at her somewhat more closely.

"No," he says after a moment. "Not for a while."

"You'd better not," she declares. "Let's go, then, your dukeness."

He finds his coat and gloves and hat – which she laughs at, even after he tells her the style is fashionable in Vienna just now – and together they descend to the lobby.

She doesn't appear to notice the disapproving glances cast their way as they exit the hotel, but he certainly does. It worries him and makes him angry all at once. God's wounds; can they not even be _friends_ without scandal?

Outdoors, it's a frigid day in late spring. The sun makes a brief, half-hearted attempt to break through the clouds, then seems to give up until summer.

"You're lucky it's so nice out today," Deryn says, grinning at him, breath wreathing her face. "We've had rain all week."

He wonders at the ability of her smiles to stop his heart. He would like to pull her to him and kiss her soundly; he would like to take her arm as they walk; he would like to confess that he cares absolutely nothing for sightseeing – that just being around her is enough.

Instead he raises an eyebrow. "_This_ is nice weather?"

She shrugs, mischief dancing in her eyes, but her response is lost to a man's voice calling, "Deryn! Aye, hullo, Deryn Sharp! Wait a moment!"

Alek turns to see a young man half-jogging towards them, hand raised in greeting, smiling. The stranger is tall, only a few years older than the two of them, respectably outfitted in a suit and hat, and the smile is all for Deryn.

Alek doesn't like him.

"Jamie!" she exclaims with a wide grin as the man reaches them. "How're you, then?"

"Very well, very well," Jamie says. He bends down to put a quick and ceremonial kiss on either side of Deryn's face, making her laugh.

Alek likes him even less, now.

"And you?" Jamie asks her. He has black hair and is, Alek supposes (begrudgingly), rather handsome. "Look at you! Prettier than half the girls in Scotland in that dress. What're you up to today? Something daft, as usual?"

"Just showing Alek around. Alek, this is Jamie Duncan," she says. "He's one of Jaspert's friends. Jamie, this is Prince Aleksandar."

"Prince?" Jamie echoes, chuckling, obviously thinking it's a fine joke. "Prince of _what_?"

Alek begins to suspect that he might hate this man.

"The duchy of Hohenberg," he says to Jamie, voice cool. "Though I'm a duke now, actually."

"Oh, aye, that's right," Deryn says. Chagrined. "Blisters, Alek, you just told me and I forgot already – I'm used to you being a prince in public, I guess."

"It's all right," he says – or he would have said, if Jamie Duncan hadn't chosen that moment to nudge her shoulder and say, "What is he in private, then?"

Deryn blushes. Actually _blushes_. Jamie laughs.

Alek doesn't scowl, but it's a near thing. He says – using the deadly polite tone he's perfected during five months of subtle war in Vienna – "I'm afraid we're delaying you, Mr. Duncan. I suppose you are on your way to work? We shouldn't want to make you late."

It's a bit of a royal "we", but damn if Alek cares. Anything to get the man away.

Unfortunately Jamie makes a dismissive noise. "It's bankers' hours I'm keeping now. I've ages yet."

"Banking!" Deryn says. Alek is immensely relieved to see that the blushing girl is gone and his midshipman is back. She sounds properly scornful: "Who's cracked enough to let _you_ hold their money, Jamie Duncan?"

Jamie laughs again… though now it seems a bit forced. "Aye, well, that was true enough, once. But I'm a respectable sort these days."

"Hanging about with me will change that fast," she says, with a wink and grin to Alek that takes away some of his ire with the situation.

But only some. And Jamie doesn't miss the aside.

"And you're walking out with her?" he says to Alek. "Have a care, lad – you'll not have a reputation left by day's end."

Deryn scoffs and says, "Get stuffed," which is encouraging, except she's smiling at him again. And she's not done with the conversation, either: "Are you still going round with Nan?"

Jamie sighs and puts a melodramatic hand to his heart. "No, she took up with some fancy lad from Edinburgh. They're to be married this summer. Invited me to the wedding – how's that for bloody nerve?"

"Oh, well, congratulations to them," Deryn says. "I suppose. And Ian McAlister? What's that bum-rag up to? I haven't seen him anywhere."

They begin talking about people Alek's never heard of, nor cares to, and he feels suddenly alone in the middle of Britain's second-largest city. Ridiculous, he tells himself, but he cannot shake the sensation that's he's perilously close to being abandoned in favor of an old friendship with Jamie Duncan.

He wants to take Deryn's arm. He wants to say, firmly, that she is with _him_ and Jamie should move along. He wants her to laugh with him the way she's laughing with the other young man.

Most of all, he wants Jamie to go away. Preferably over a cliff of some sort.

Alek says nothing, but his fingers twitch, looking for a saber that isn't there.

Slight as it is, the movement must catch Deryn's eye, because she glances at him, and her face creases into a frown. "Alek?" she asks, interrupting Jamie's story about someone or the other who's gotten into trouble with someone else's cousin. "Are you all right?"

For a moment he contemplates telling her the truth, but it seems so petty – and besides, eight hundred years of Hapsburg pride won't let him admit that he looks at a peasant Glaswegian and sees a rival.

"Yes, of course," he tells her in German. "Merely anxious to begin our tour."

"Only another minute, I promise, and then we'll be done," she says in the same, smiling at him, nudging his side with one elbow.

Jamie laughs uneasily. "You sound like a proper sodding Clanker, Deryn!"

"Aye, I'd hope so," she says. She looks at Alek and smiles again. "I had a proper Clanker teacher."

There are many things unsaid in that smile – many things that Jamie Duncan couldn't possibly understand, because he was never part of their adventures – and Alek feels a sense of victory.

He would very much like to kiss her.

Jamie Duncan clears his throat. "Staying in a hotel, then, Your Highness?"

"For the moment," Alek says immediately. "Mrs. Sharp has graciously offered me the use of her home."

Jamie doesn't like that; his eyes narrow. Alek meets his gaze and holds it. Daring him. Saying, in effect, _She's mine and you cannot have her, and I shall fight to keep her_ (though Deryn would kill him if he ever professed such a thing out loud).

Preoccupied with the stand-off, he doesn't at first notice the man hurrying towards them – but he does notice when Deryn gives his sleeve a sharp tug and hauls him a half-step to one side.

"Christ Jesus, Duncan, there you are," the man says, out of breath, one hand clapped to his hat, holding it to his head. He glances at Alek and Deryn, but doesn't acknowledge them beyond a curt bob of his head. "Move your feet, lad, or we'll miss the train!"

"Aye, coming," Jamie says; the other man huffs and starts jogging, presumably for the train station, calling backwards, "I'm not making excuses for you this time, Duncan, I don't care who your da is!"

Jamie, not visibly upset by this rather public shaming, looks to Deryn again. "Well, I'm off, but I'll catch you up later, aye? And give Jaspert my hellos if you see him first."

"He's halfway around the world right now," Deryn says. Disgruntled about it. "Lucky sod."

"Well, then," Jamie says. He glances at Alek and politely touches the brim of his hat. "Enjoy Glasgow, Your Highness."

"I intend to," Alek says stiffly. "It was nice to have met you, Mr. Duncan."

"Likewise." Jamie leans forward and kisses Deryn's cheek again. "Goodbye, love," he says, making her blush and Alek scowl. Then he's off.

They watch him run to catch up with the other man. When he does, Jamie Duncan will turn around and wave, Alek knows. Then Deryn will wave back, and Alek will have to wonder about it for the rest of the day, if not longer.

"Deryn," he says, laying his hand on her arm, just above the elbow.

"Aye?" she says, surprised. She looks at him.

He kisses her.

Not on the cheek; full on the mouth. He means it to only last a moment – only enough to distract – but it's wonderful and shocking and terribly, terribly exciting to kiss her on a public street, in full view of everyone walking past. He finds his fingers curling of their own accord around her arms, drawing her closer even as the kiss deepens.

Her lips are cold and she tastes rather like coffee, and she makes a pleased little _mm_ into his mouth that entirely erases the memory of these past five months of separation and convinces him, more than ever, that they should not be sleeping under the same roof.

He half-turns them, so that her back is to Jamie, and spares a moment to glance at the man.

Jamie Duncan has turned around, as predicted. He looks startled, then disappointed, then finally resigned. He shakes his head, stuffs his hands into his coat pockets, and moves on.

Alek breaks off the kiss - and steps back slightly, lest he be overcome by the urge to repeat the performance.

Deryn stares at him with luminous eyes: a blue more amazing than anything the sky might produce, in spring or otherwise.

"What was that for?" she asks softly. Then adds, grinning, "Not that I'm complaining, mind."

He glances at the spot where Jamie Duncan stood, and back at her. Somehow he knows _Because I am impossibly jealous_ will not work.

"I missed you," he says, settling for another truth.

Deryn gives him a hard, searching look, then presses a much briefer kiss to his lips and says firmly, "Good, Clanker, because I missed you too. Now stop being so barking jealous and let's get back to sightseeing, aye?"

"Yes," he says, pretending not to be embarrassed. He would much rather think about the day ahead: no court, no Volger, nothing but his best friend's undivided attention.

And perhaps a few more kisses.

He smiles at her. "I believe I would like that very much."

She grins, and takes his arm as they walk.


	76. a bit of destiny

_"Oh, each and every day a bit of destiny."_

- from "Love and Gasoline" by Donna the Buffalo

.

.

.

"I was wrong," Alek says softly.

"About what, love?"

He strokes the soft skin of his newborn daughter's face. "_This_ was my destiny."

Deryn snorts, as she always does when he talks about destiny. But she kisses him, also. Rests her head on his shoulder. He holds her close.

They watch tiny, perfect Sophie sleep, too exhausted and excited to do the same themselves.

It's amazing, really. He has never felt such love as he does for this child. _His_ child.

"Your destiny," Deryn says eventually.

Alek nods. "Without a doubt."

"Good," she says. "You can change her nappies, then."


	77. reshuffled again

**Note: **This time, on "that iPod shuffle challenge"… nothing but songs from the 1980s! Reader, it was an excellent decade. Don't hate on it. ;)

.

.

.

**1. "Lay Your Hands On Me" by The Thompson Twins**

Deryn picks the worst moments.

She does it deliberately – Alek is certain of that. There's no other reason to explain why she would choose, in the middle of a formal dinner, to lean over and whisper an absolutely indecent suggestion into his ear.

He half-chokes on his drink. Looks at her, at the innocent expression on her face, at the devilish smirk hidden in the corners of her eyes.

Just this once, he decides to call her bluff. "All right," he says, "I'll get our coats."

Much too late he realizes that he hasn't outmaneuvered her; he's encouraged her to try it again next time.

They leave a lot of dinners early.

.

.

.

**2. "Stand Back" by Stevie Nicks**

She has to keep him at arm's length.

That's the worst part. Every bone, every drop of blood, every life-thread in her body wants nothing more than to bring him in closer – as close as two people can be – and instead she has to smile and act like a boy and pretend her heart's not cracking clean in half from not having him.

She has to be his _friend_.

She can't be anything more. He can't see her – the real her. He only gets to see the lies, and he never does bother to try reading between them to find the truth.

In the end it's too barking much.

She has to walk away from him.

.

.

.

**3. "In A Big Country" by Big Country**

"I like America," Deryn declares. Hands on hips. Goggles pushed up onto her forehead.

Wind gusts across the _Leviathan_ and the land below, ruffling both her hair and the endless miles of gold cornfields.

"It's lovely," Alek says dubiously, peering at the same vista.

"Not down there, ninny," she says. She tilts her face up, happy as a sunflower. "Look at all this _sky_!"

.

.

.

**4. "Girls On Film" by Duran Duran**

"I wonder if there's any way to buy a copy of this newsreel," Alek says.

Deryn gives him an incredulous look. "Why d'you want to do that?"

He flounders for a reason. "Well – I suppose – to watch it whenever I like."

"Where?" she asks, laughing. "You don't have a cinema!"

"Hmm. True enough."

"And why _this_ newsreel, anyway?"

"Because you're in it," he says, and gives her a quick kiss in the darkness.

.

.

.

**5. "I Know What Boys Like" by The Waitresses**

Deryn hasn't the first sodding clue what boys like.

She knows how to pretend to be a boy, but not how a girl's supposed to act, if she wants a boy to like her. She supposes it involves fluttering and being coy and dropping handkerchiefs and all that rubbish.

But she's dead terrible at that sort of thing.

So she goes right along spitting, swearing, throwing knives, tying knots, climbing the rigging, and swearing some more (it's fun).

And as it turns out: that's exactly what Alek likes.

.

.

.

**6. "Blue Dress" by Depeche Mode**

He counts it as a victory when he can get her into a dress.

She hates wearing dresses, but he loves it – there's something exotic about it. Exciting and different.

There's one dress in particular. It's as blue as her eyes and it takes his breath away when she wears it.

He likes to catch her by the hand and spin her into a waltz, skirts belling out. He likes to whisper ridiculous compliments into her ear until she laughs and forgets that she hates wearing dresses.

He loves his tough airman. He loves, too, his pretty wife.

And most of all, he loves to help her take the dress _off_.

.

.

.

**7. "With Or Without You" by U2**

Alek stands before the window, watching rain patter on the glass when he ought to be minding what his ministers are discussing at the table behind him.

He touches the glass, cool and slick, and wonders: _Is it raining where you are?_

He wonders. _Who comforts you when there's a thunderstorm in the night, and you wake crying for your father?_

He wonders why he ever imagined that a crown could fill the place in his heart that is rightfully hers.

Watches the rain trace tears down the window and wonders.

_Do you miss me?_

.

.

.

**8. "Englishman In New York" by Sting**

"People are looking," Alek says. Deryn glances about; people passing by them are indeed looking. Staring. Muttering darkly.

Blisters – why did she think New York might be kinder than London?

If her hair was longer and she was wearing skirts, they wouldn't notice her – she'd just be another girl. If her hair was shorter and she wasn't walking arm-in-arm with Alek, they wouldn't notice her – she'd just be another boy.

Instead she's _herself_, and all of these people who don't like it can sod off.

"I don't barking care," she says.

He grins at her, quick and bright. "Neither do I."

Deryn laughs, and they keep walking.

.

.

.

**9. "Everywhere" by Fleetwood Mac**

She grasps Alek's hand in hers. Pampered prince that he is – was – his skin isn't half as rough and callused.

"Goodbye, then," she says, as if it isn't killing her.

"Goodbye, Deryn," he says softly. His eyes are sad.

He lets go of her hand and she says nothing, nothing, nothing as he turns to leave forever.

But what can she do? Leave the _Leviathan_, leave the sky? Go with him to Lord knows where?

"Alek, wait!" she calls. He pauses. Looks back at her. Made reckless by sudden panic, heart hammering in her chest, she says, "I'm coming with you."

.

.

.

**10. "Beat It" by Michael Jackson**

"It's not so bad," Deryn says, examining the bruise forming on his arm. "Didn't cut you, at least."

Alek scowls. His pride is damaged enough. "A small mercy."

She sighs and sticks her hand out. After a moment of further sulking, he accepts it and allows her to haul him to his feet.

"Congratulations, Miss Sharp," Count Volger says. "That was nearly adequate."

"Aye, thanks," she says, grinning at the (for Volger) generous praise. She turns to Alek. Raises her saber with a flourish. "Two out of three, your princeliness?"

"I should never have taught you how to fence," Alek says.


	78. fit to print, part 1

**Note:** The original request from Frogster: _Deryn says that the local __papers wrote about how her dad had saved her and his being awarded the Air __Gallantry Cross. I figured the paper would mention Deryn's (real) name, which __might necessitate a reveal if Alek ever somehow got a hold of the papers - of __course, he'd have to do so in Glasgow._

Well, of course! Though I'm afraid you're getting this in a two-parter… hope that's all right. :D

.

.

.

_"The nicest thing is to open the newspapers and not to find yourself in them."_

_George Harrison_

.

.

.

It shall take a bit of sleuthing.

Alek arrives in Glasgow with little more than the name Dylan Sharp and the restless, undefined urge to see his old friend. It's been years – nearly five – and he never meant to lose contact like this, but somehow he has. They promised letters, they promised visits, and then weeks became months and months became years, and it wasn't until Alek wrote _1920_ on a document that he realized how long he'd been missing the midshipman's easy, steady friendship.

After a morning of thinking and plotting, he ends up in the offices of _The Glasgow Herald_, sipping lukewarm tea as a harried editor tries to simultaneously help him and get a newspaper published.

The editor fields six complaining reporters and three messages from his secretary before scrubbing a hand through his (already disheveled) hair and turning back to Alek. "Who was it you were asking after, sir?"

"A man named Sharp," Alek says, "who received –"

"Aye, right, the Air Gallantry Cross," the editor says. He rummages about in his desk and comes up with a cigar, which he offers to Alek with a quirk of his eyebrows. Alek shakes his head. The editor shrugs, then clips and lights the cigar with one hand, shaking out the match. "Years ago, that was – sort of thing you don't really forget. Bloody tragedy."

It was an open flame which had caused that bloody tragedy, but Alek declines to point this out. "Would you happen to have a copy of that story?"

"Oh, aye, in the archives, or the morgue files, more like. Here, I'm a bit busy, but I'll have Nevin take you – _Nevin_! Get your arse in here!"

One of the complaining reporters pops into the editor's office, looking exasperated. "Aye sir?"

"Air Gallantry Cross from '12. June, I think it was."

"Right, that," Nevin says. He's got one hand on the doorframe as if he expects to make a hasty escape at any moment. "The balloon fire. Christ, Innes couldn't take the smell of burnt meat for months – why?"

The editor points at Alek with the cigar. "This Clanker – no offense, sir - wants to see it. Take him to the archives."

Nevin looks cross. "Now? But I have –"

"_Now!_" the editor barks, banging a fist on his desk. Nevin heaves a sigh.

"Well, come along, then," he says truculently to Alek, shoving off from the doorframe. Alek abandons his tea, hastily thanks the editor, and follows.

They weave their way though the crowded bullpen and into a lift operated by some sort of fabricated creature – almost, but not quite, like a monkey. Almost, but not quite, like a loris.

Alek wonders if Dylan still has Bovril. At the time, he'd told himself that the loris would be much happier with Dylan and all the other beasties of Britain. Perhaps that was only wishful thinking to make himself feel better about the separation.

If so, it didn't work.

"Archives," Nevin tells the creature, sounding impatient. The fab pushes a button, pulls a lever, and then hangs on the lift's cage, staring at Alek without blinking as they begin to descend. He quirks a smile at the creature.

"Damned odd story to be looking up," Nevin says. Conversationally – but with a reporter's sharp-edged curiosity.

"Yes," Alek says. The truth is much too complicated, so he condenses, as he did for the editor: "His son saved my life during the war. I'd like to thank him, but I haven't the slightest idea where to start looking."

Nevin glances at him with new appreciation. "So here you are. Clever. Well, that's not half a bad story. I'll get you settled and have a go at some investigating myself, aye? Better than that bloody daft thing I'm supposed to be doing." He rolls his eyes, and Alek realizes the man's protests of busyness to the editor were just for show.

The lift lurches to a stop. The fab chitters, pulls a lever, and pushes another button that makes the doors open. It seems to enjoy its work.

Alek trails behind Nevin again. This storey appears to be nothing but storage and is almost entirely deserted, save for a sleepy-looking clerk behind a desk. The _Herald_'s offices all smell thickly of paper and ink, but here especially; the musty smell tickles at Alek's nose and threatens to make him sneeze. Dim light slants in from narrow windows, set high in the walls. It mainly illuminates dust motes.

Nevin greets the clerk, then leads Alek into a maze of shelves. They're piled haphazardly with enormous folios, cheaply bound, some mere bundles of newsprint tied with string.

"June of '12, June of '12… Oh, aye, here it is." The reporter pulls one of the folios and drops it into Alek's hands. "Take that over to the table – that one, below the window there. I don't remember the day, but there's no missing it – it was our headline for weeks."

"Thank you, Mr. Nevin," Alek says.

Nevin grins. "Leave you to it, then," the reporter says, turning and departing with considerably more pep than he's yet displayed.

Alek takes a seat at the indicated table and opens the folio. It doesn't take him long to find the first article.

TRAGEDY ON GLASGOW GREEN

It takes up nearly three quarters of the front page. Alek remembers, keenly, the night Dylan had told him about his father's death – how absolutely shattered the other boy had been. Reading this now almost feels like a violation of some sort.

He shakes off the feeling and skims the rather breathless prose for any useful details. Right away he learns two things: first, that Dylan's father was named Artemis, and secondly, that he died saving his young daughter.

Daughter. Not son.

"That's not right," he murmurs, frowning. Did Dylan ever mention having a sister? He can't remember, but he thinks not. Regardless, it wasn't a _girl_ who was pushed to safety.

Something cold pricks at his stomach. He ignores it. Newspapers make mistakes all the time, as he well knows.

Alek reads to the end of the article – which dwells in ghoulish detail on the blaze itself – and doesn't glean anything further. He turns the pages of the folio, looking for the next story.

That one is essentially a long obituary, heaping praise on Artemis Sharp for his heroism. It discusses his neighbors' opinions of his mad act, his long-held enthusiasm for ballooning, and his inexplicable desire to take his daughter aloft with him.

Daughter. Not son.

The cold prickles become a slither. He swallows and reads on. Mrs. Sharp refuses to comment, as does her son – and for a moment Alek relaxes –

- but the son's name is Jaspert.

And the daughter's name is Deryn.

And she does talk to the paper, with a reckless bravado that horrifies the reporter: _"Da loved flying, and I'm the same. I'll not stop just because of this."_

That's Dylan. Alek can hear his friend saying it – his friend whose voice never really lowered, who sometimes – in moments of great stress or fear – sounded oddly girlish.

Dylan. Deryn.

All of her meticulous deception laid bare by yellowed newsprint and fading ink.

He draws in a shaking breath.

"God's wounds," he says, voice equally unsteady. Memories flicker past his mind's eye like scenes from a newsreel. Comments, gestures, glances that never quite made sense are now all too obvious. "You never told me."

And suddenly it's too much. He closes the folio, stands in such a hurry that the chair scrapes against the floor (though the noise doesn't seem to wake the drowsing clerk), and walks blindly back towards the lift.

The fab scurries around, pulling levers and chittering at him, but he can't pay the thing any attention. His thoughts are in a mad, roaring jumble. He must leave Glasgow – immediately. He'll go back to his hotel. Book passage home. He can pretend he never came. He can pretend his long-lost best friend died in the war and was not, in fact, a girl in disguise.

What a fool he was.

What a fool.

Nevin is waiting for him when he gets off the lift. "You're in luck," the reporter says, cheerful, holding out a slip of paper with an address scrawled across in bold writing. "Widow Sharp takes the _Herald_."


	79. what the loris saw

**Note:** The second part of "fit to print" is coming! It's taking somewhat longer than I thought, because I'm a perfectionist who must rewrite everything until I post it just to be done with it. In the meantime, have this!

The original request from Penelope Wendy Bing: _I think I want you to write... a story in the POV of__the beastie of your choice. _

I kept hoping I'd have an idea for a non-bizarre fic from the _Leviathan's_ POV, but alas, it never came. ;)

.

.

.

Bovril is trying to sleep.

It truly is. It has had a long and wearying – though very exciting and fascinating and new-things-learning – sort of day, and it is rather tired and would like to sleep. Bovril has already worked out that a loris does not sleep as deeply as a human person. It has connected this detail to another: a loris requires more hours of sleep to be rested.

Bovril certainly needs more sleep than its People, who are still quite awake.

The noise is not the problem; its People are whispering, which Bovril finds a pleasant and reassuring sound. It's the way they continue to jostle the bed that is the trouble.

Bovril has carefully selected the most comfortable corner of the bed, arranged the linens to its satisfaction, and curled into a wonderfully tight ball that is just the thing for falling sound asleep.

But its People are sitting on the floor, and they continue to bump into the bed at irregular intervals. And now the whispering has turned into muffled sounds of amusement.

Bovril lifts its head, flicking its ears forward to better catch what they are saying. It's always listening, but it is not always paying _close_ attention when it is, for example, trying to sleep.

"Give it here –"

"I haven't finished -"

"God's wounds, yes you have!"

Bovril sits up and, from this better vantage, sees that they are struggling over a piece of paper. _Mr._ Sharp has possession of the paper and is holding it out to her right side, as far away as possible from Alek, who is on her left. Alek is trying to grab it from her hand, and she is trying to fend him off.

Bovril thinks that either of them might succeed in their respective ambitions, if they would stop shaking with barely suppressed laughter.

"Give me that! It's a terrible picture," Alek says. He seems to want to scowl, but is grinning.

"I reckon – I reckon it looks just l-like you," _Mr_. Sharp says, her breath stuttering with the effort not to laugh. "Though the ears – the ears could be – a squick bigger, aye?"

Alek _hmphs!_ and makes a diving sort of grab for the paper, sending both of them toppling to the floor.

Bovril moves to the edge of the bed and peers over.

There is an impromptu wrestling match as _Mr_. Sharp stretches her arm out above her head, still keeping the paper away despite Alek's best efforts. And then, quite suddenly, they are not wrestling but kissing, and the paper lies on the floor, utterly forgotten.

Except by the loris. It is always happy when its People are happy, and kissing one another seems to make them very happy indeed. But it finds the act rather boring, otherwise. The abandoned paper looks much more interesting.

It climbs down to the floor and examines the paper. _Mr_. Sharp has drawn a picture of Alek. She is a good artist normally, but the drawing does not match Alek's proportions at all. Apparently this is funny.

Bovril makes note of this detail, then sits back on its haunches to look at its People.

They are still kissing. _Mr_. Sharp has Alek pinned beneath her, and he has buried his hand in her hair and is pulling her hard against him.

Bovril compares this scene to similar others it has observed, and decides that it has information worth imparting.

"Next watch," it says in Mr. Newkirk's accent. "See you then."

Its People go still. Then _Mr_. Sharp clambers to her feet, wiping at her mouth and saying, "Barking spiders, Newkirk'll be here any second!"

Alek says a word in German that Bovril has not heard before – a new word; how exciting! – and stands as well. They spend a moment helping to put each other's clothes to rights, and then Alek makes a hurried farewell and leaves the cabin.

_Mr_. Sharp pushes a hand through her hair and blows out a heavy breath. "Too sodding tricky, this kissing business," she mutters to no one. She glances down at Bovril, then picks him up and settles him on her shoulder. "Thanks, beastie. That would've been dead impossible to explain away."

"Impossible," it agrees.

She scratches its ears, which is extremely satisfactory as far as Bovril is concerned. When Mr. Newkirk arrives, she sets Bovril down on the bed and strolls off to perform her duties as if nothing unusual has transpired.

Bovril waits for a minute, but there are no further disruptive incidents. The noises of the airbeast are entirely normal. And it has been useful to its People, which feels _right,_ on the very deepest level.

It finds the most comfortable corner of the bed, arranges the linens, and curls into the tightest ball it can manage.

Just the thing.


	80. fit to print, part 2

**Note:** If you think back-to-school season is stressful and overwhelming for students... then clearly you aren't a teacher. WHEW.

Meanwhile: _Eighty chapters_! What! That's crazy! And yet... _not crazy enough_. *cackle* We'll get to 100 yet, me hearties! :D

.

.

.

She's always known it would take a bit of explaining.

And that's why she never tried, isn't it?

Why she ran off and left the Air Service. Why she ran off and left _Alek_ - though doing both, all at once, nearly killed her.

Why she kept the only letter he sent her, four years ago (read it until she had the words memorized and the paper worn to tatters), but never wrote back.

So she'd never have to face the moment when he looks at her as a girl.

This moment.

She stands, caught flat-footed in the front hall of her ma's house, staring in shock at the young man in the doorway. The housekeeper's let him in, and is now solicitously collecting his coat and hat.

Deryn recognizes him straight off, of course. For all that he's grown taller – and grown a mustache! – he's still Alek.

And those green eyes, when they find her, are every bit as haunted with old sadness as she remembers. Though right now there's a squick more anger than sadness.

"Dylan," he says. An accusation, not a greeting.

She swallows down the panic. He can't possibly think she's a boy; she's wearing trousers, but her shirt isn't tailored to hide anything, and her ma hasn't let her cut her hair since she came home. "Aye, it's me," she says, lifting her chin. "Hello, Alek."

His eyes narrow.

The housekeeper steps in delicately and says, "Beg pardon, Miss Deryn, sir, but will you be wanting tea presently?"

"We might," Deryn says, just as Alek says, "No, I shan't be staying."

"Then why did you sodding come?" Deryn asks, turning on him. It comes out snappish, which she wasn't intending. Blisters! Of all the times to act like a ninny girl… Still, she's not going to apologize. If he means to show up, insult her, and leave, he deserves to be snapped at.

He goes stiff and princely, which doesn't bode well. "I was looking for Dylan Sharp," he says, a bit snappish himself.

"Aye, well, he's not around anymore," she says, heading for her ma's front sitting room.

After a moment, he follows, expensive boots clicking crisply on the fabricated wood floor. "So I see."

He doesn't sound happy.

She glances over her shoulder. "My real name's Deryn."

"I know," he says. He doesn't seem too pleased about that, either. "I did some research at the _Herald_. Your father's accident - But I'm sure you don't need me to explain further."

She doesn't. Blisters. Those bum-rag reporters.

Deryn plunks herself down on the sofa, crossing her legs so that her ankle balances on her knee. Then she crosses her arms over her chest and arches an eyebrow at Alek, who's standing, looking as if the furniture might jump up and bite him if he tries to sit. "Not as fancy as you're used to, Your Highness," she says, deliberately goading him, "but it's clean enough."

"I'm not concerned about that," he says, scowling at her. He picks a chair and sits. Somehow he manages to make her great-great-granny's spindly wooden armchair look like a throne. "Your mother keeps an excellent house."

"I'll tell her you said so when she's back from visiting," Deryn says. "I thought you weren't staying."

"I've changed my mind." He looks at her – properly _looks at her_ - for the first time. She feels her face heating under the scrutiny, and stares determinedly back.

When did he grow a mustache? She likes the way it looks on him. It's not some great bristled thing like that sodding Count Volger used to have (probably still has), but modern and neatly trimmed. It makes him look more princely yet. And too barking handsome for his own good.

It makes her realize, keenly, how much time's passed. They were children when they parted – pretending to be an emperor-in-waiting, pretending to be a boy. And now they're adults.

She wonders what he sees, looking at her.

"It's true, isn't it," he says after a moment, all the crossness fading from his voice. "You really are a girl."

Well, there's _that_ answered. He sees a barking _girl_.

She nods, not trusting herself to speak. Alek may not be angry any longer, but right now she's not so certain she won't tell him to get stuffed and challenge him to a fistfight.

He passes a hand over his face. "I don't want to argue," he says tiredly. "I just want to know – was it all a lie?"

His eyes are sad. Confused. Betrayed. She can see clear through the man to the lonely boy she met that night in Switzerland, and it digs a knife into her heart.

Sodding hell. This is exactly why she never told him.

"No," she says, dropping her foot to the floor. She leans forward, trying to catch his eyes so he can see how serious she is. "I was always your friend, Alek. Aye, I lied about being a boy, but I wasn't lying about you and me. _That_ was the truth."

The haunted look returns, along with a bitterness that pricks at her heart. "I wish that I could believe you, Deryn."

That hurts. It hurts double to hear him say her real name.

She chooses to be angry instead of wounded.

"Barking _spiders_! And you wonder why I didn't tell you before!" She stands up and puts her hands on her hips, glaring at him afresh. "If that clart's all you've to say, then get out of my ma's house before I toss you out on your bum!"

He rises, matching her glare, one hand reaching towards his hip where a sword should be. And that's where they are when the housekeeper bustles in with a tea tray.

"Here you are, Miss Deryn," she says, cheerfully, deliberately oblivious. She sets the tray down on the table and beams at Alek. Mrs. Gibb is a granny herself; when she smiles her face disappears into a cobweb scrunch of wrinkles. She's a bittie wee thing, and impossible to resist. "It's lovely to have you, sir, if I might say so. The miss isn't one to have many gentlemen calling on her, you ken."

"Indeed," Alek says. There's some asperity in his voice, but a smile is threatening, too. He darts a glance at Deryn. "I can't imagine why that's so."

"Aye, exactly," Mrs. Gibb says. Merry. Beaming. Up to bloody mischief. "She's a bonny lass, isn't she – even in those britches!"

"Mrs. Gibb, could you go fetch Bovril?" Deryn asks, desperate to get her out of the room.

"Oh, aye, right away, Miss – but, oh, I've forgot! I've the dinner roast in the oven, and it's fair to burnt by now, I reckon. You might go looking for the wee rascal yourselves?" the housekeeper suggests. Innocent as a nun on Sunday.

Deryn gives her a dark glare. "The wee rascal can stay where it barking is, then."

Alek says, an odd note to his voice, "That's quite all right – I should like to see Bovril again before I go."

Aye, of course he would; he always loved the loris. She remembers how shattered he'd looked, handing Bovril over to her five years ago. She'd tried to tell him he and Bovril'd both be happier if Alek kept the beastie, but no. _Dummkopf_.

"It was upstairs last," Mrs. Gibb says, bobs a curtsy, and bustles back out.

Alek looks at Deryn, trying for a princely mask and failing. The truth is stamped on his face: he's hopeful and expectant and barking pleased at the thought of seeing Bovril again.

Now she's feeling guilty _and_ a squick jealous. Lovely.

"Come on, then," she says, resigned to the knowledge that Alek's going to be tramping through her ma's house. She leads him up the stairs, taking them two at a time just to show off. He's right at her heels, though, and isn't out of breath when they reach the top.

She wonders if he's still fencing every day with Volger. That's daft; of course he is.

Alek peers around the hallway as they walk down it. Deryn looks too. The wallpaper that's peeling a bit at the bottom over there; the picture frames that're chipped where she and Jaspert knocked them off the wall years ago, squabbling; the place where the roof leaked and left a water stain no one's ever got to plastering over… it must seem pure dead shabby to him.

"How is Bovril?" Alek asks, sounding too casual to be believed.

"Barking fat," Deryn says. She sticks her head into Jaspert's old room and finds it empty. "My auntie's been feeding it all sorts of rubbish."

"This would be the aunt with the enormous cat?" Alek says, trailing behind her.

Deryn snorts. "That's not a cat, it's a ballast stone with fur. Bovril's not that bad yet, but only because I've kept it away from her as much as I can. Don't," she adds sharply, seeing Alek put one hand on a doorknob and start turning. He pauses, frowning, and she explains, "That's my ma's room. Bovril never goes in there – hates the way her perfume smells."

"Ah," Alek says, letting his hand fall.

"It's probably in my room," she says, because it usually is – and that seems to be the way her luck's going this afternoon. She opens her own door, suddenly grateful she's never quite fallen out of the Air Service habit of keeping her room shipshape and Bristol fashion.

Everything's tidied away, and you could bounce a shilling off of the bedsheets. Bovril is curled up on her pillow, snoozing away.

At least until Alek says, "_Guten Tag_, Bovril!"

The loris pops its head up, blinks those great wide eyes, and exclaims, "_Guten Tag!_ Alek! _Wie gehts_?"

Alek crosses the room and sits on the bed without so much as a by-your-leave to Deryn. Sodding princes… but she can't be too angry about it, since Bovril is clambering across Alek's shoulders, babbling ecstatically in a fevered mix of German and English, and Alek is grinning like a fool.

"God's wounds, Bovril," Alek says in German, "you _have_ become rather fat, haven't you?"

"Strawberries and fresh cream," Bovril says. "Every day!"

Alek chuckles. Deryn turns slightly away, hiding her smile, and sees that she left the album out. The black book is lying right there on her windowsill, splashed by sun, where Alek might spot it at any moment.

Oh, bugger.

She darts a glance at Alek (he's consumed with Bovril's chattering), then goes and picks it up, trying not to be noticed. She can stick it on top of the wardrobe -

"Is that a sketchbook?" Alek asks. Bovril is perched on the back of his head, ducking him forward. It would be funny, if her heart wasn't in her throat.

Her fingers tighten on the album. "No – well, aye, sort of."

Bovril says, "Sodding _Herald_."

That earns a swift, suspicious look from Alek, who turns back to Deryn and asks politely, "May I see it?"

She wavers – but there's no good way to say _Bloody hell, no!_ without offending him, so she puts it into his hands.

Bovril cackles; Alek gives it another suspicious look. Then he opens the album.

The first page has a sketch of him that she did on the Leviathan. It's nothing particularly daft or mooning. Just Alek sitting on a crate, looking off to the side, a smile starting on his face.

No, that's not so bad. It's the second page onward that makes her face grow hot.

CHAOS ON THE CONTINENT, the first newspaper article proclaims. WAR OF WORDS IN VIENNA AS LATE ARCHDUKE'S SON MAKES A BID FOR THE THRONE.

Alek turns the pages mechanically. The whole barking story is there. Reported by the _Glasgow Herald_, clipped and pasted into the black pages by Deryn, who had cried for hours when the end of it was announced two years ago.

ARCHDUKE CHARLES TRIUMPHANT

Because if Alek wasn't emperor, it had all been a waste, hadn't it?

After that, there's only one more page: a newspaper photo from the emperor's coronation, and, pasted right beside it, a drawing she'd done of Alek in the same pose, with the same crown.

That one _is_ a bit mooning.

Alek sits there, one hand on the open book, staring at nothing. "I don't understand," he says, voice hollow.

Bovril makes a plaintive noise.

She swallows and sits on the bed beside him, taking the book from his hands and closing it again. "I'm sorry you're not emperor. Blisters, I can't tell you how sorry."

He shakes his head as if to clear it. "But you never wrote."

Her fingers dig into the black cover, and she forces herself to relax. "No."

"Why?"

Now it's her turn to shake her head.

She can't tell him. The words stick in her throat, crowded out by shame and embarrassment. Five barking years.

What a fool she's been.

What a sodding fool.

He lifts Bovril from his shoulders and resettles the loris into his lap. "Court is an… _isolating_ place," he says in that hollow voice. "Every smile is calculated; no one is truly a friend. And it was doubly worse for me, because of what I was attempting to do. I kept telling myself that you had probably taken up on another ship and were halfway around the world, having adventures, and that's why you didn't write…"

He takes a breath, and she thinks he's going to stop there, but then, unsteady, he presses on: "But - God's wounds, Deryn, there were days I prayed for one word from you."

Guilt cracks her heart; the pain in his voice finds the wound and makes it burn.

Instinctively, before she can think better of it, she lays a hand along his cheek. Shaved whiskers rasp under her palm and remind her anew that they're no longer children.

His eyes go slightly wide, but he doesn't pull away, and after a moment his hand comes up to cover hers.

She takes courage from that, and (before she can think better of it) leans forward and presses her lips to his.

It's not much of a kiss. Gentle and dry and above all brief – it only lasts half a moment. Her heart is pounding like mad the whole while, and there's a roaring in her ears. She pulls back and drops her eyes immediately, just so she doesn't have to see rejection on his face.

"That's why," she says. Unsteady. "That's why I couldn't write you, Alek."

He doesn't say anything. Doesn't move.

"There were days I prayed for a word from you, too." She gives the floor a lopsided grin. "Probably not the same word."

He makes an inarticulate small noise in his throat. "No."

"I'm sorry for it," she says, plunging ahead, confessing all her secrets now. "I know it can't work, and I've tried to let it go. And if you don't – feel the same, it's all right, aye?"

He doesn't say anything. She risks looking at him, only to find him studying her. Wonder and confusion war across his face. Their eyes meet and for a long time (much longer than that daft try at kissing) they simply stare at each other.

Electricity crackles down the back of her neck. For the first time ever, she fancies he might be feeling the same thing. Certainly there's a reason his ears are turning pink.

Abruptly, he drops his gaze. "I should go," he says.

She stands. Lays the book aside. Clears her throat. Aims for a brisk, soldierly nonchalance to hide the sting in her heart. "Aye, I suppose you should."

He stands, automatically resettling Bovril on his shoulder. Now he's gone barking scarlet. "Deryn – it's not – I don't mean – It's only that – I have had a day of surprises, and I doubt that I'm handling them as well as I might."

"I reckon I can understand that," she says. And she does. Anger, panic, guilt, fear, embarrassment, frustration – all in the last twenty minutes. Blisters. It's enough to make your sodding head spin.

So she understands, all right… though what she really wants him to do, instead of leaving, is to grab her up and kiss her until they're both breathless.

Aye, well, can't have everything. At least he's speaking to her. At least she's had this chance to see him again.

They go back downstairs. Mrs. Gibb is nowhere to be seen, though the roast in the oven (which Deryn was dead certain the woman was making up) smells delicious. At the door Deryn gives Alek back his hat and coat, and he sets Bovril on the floor at her feet.

And then he surprises her by pulling her into a fierce, rough hug, his arms tight around her shoulders. "Are we still friends?" he whispers. His breath tickles her neck.

"Aye," she whispers around the sudden lump in her gullet. "I told you - we always were."

He lets out a shuddering breath that she can feel vibrating through her own chest, and draws her closer yet. "Thank God," he says, choked. "I missed you."

"I missed you too." She blinks hard against the tears and puts a hand on the back of his neck, threading her fingers through his lovely hair. Something cold and lonely that's been sitting in her gut for five years finally dissolves. "I missed you too, _Dummkopf_."

"That's why," Bovril says, sounding immensely satisfied.

.

.

.

The _Glasgow Herald_ prints the wedding notice two months later.


	81. busted

**Note:** Original inspiration from a sketch by the fabulous Shenli on DeviantArt. I thought this was going to be some short little funny thing, and then it… grew. DARN IT.

.

.

.

There's a moment when Deryn realizes she's made a horrible mistake in agreeing to more fencing lessons from Alek.

Unfortunately, that moment is just a squick too late to be helpful.

Before then, however, things are going well.

She dashes through her other morning duties so she can spend a few extra minutes with Alek. He's still confined to his stateroom, even though Deryn has been indignantly informing all the officers, the bosun, and the boffins – anyone who'll listen, in other words - that Alek might be a Clanker, but he's no enemy of _theirs_.

Sodding war.

Well, it's not going to stop her from keeping up with her friend. Deryn raps on the door of Alek's stateroom with an "Oi, Alek, breakfast!" before barging right in.

And nearly gets herself skewered on a mop handle.

Deryn ducks, dishes clattering and rattling on the tray, and manages not to yelp like a girl _or_ drop anything.

Eyes wide in alarm, Alek hastily lowers the mop handle. "Dylan! God's wounds - are you all right?"

"Aye, fine," she says, recovering and closing the door behind her. "Lost ten years off my life, though."

"I'm sorry," he says. He's wearing his fencing gear, which still looks perfectly daft. Even more so when it's paired with a wooden stick instead of a proper saber. He puts the mop handle down, leaning it against the wall alongside another, identical stick. "I wasn't expecting you to be - well, _there_."

She sets the tray safely down on the desk and gives him an arch look. "So I noticed. A squick bored, are you?"

He grimaces. "Perhaps just a bit."

"Just a bit," Bovril adds, popping up from wherever it's been hiding to beg attention from Deryn. She obliges, letting the beastie clamber up onto her shoulder.

"Even if I wasn't a prisoner, Captain Hobbes has declared that he won't let a prince near the engines. There's really nothing else for me to do." Alek gestures towards the bed. "And I seem to have exhausted the books Count Volger sent over for my edification."

"Blisters," Deryn says, eyeing the stack piled haphazardly on the mattress. Alek must be going mad from boredom to have read even one – they look deadly dull. "Did he lug those all the way from Vienna?"

"Konopischt," he corrects. "And it would seem so."

"He ought to have tossed the books and kept the gold, if you ask me," Deryn says, meanwhile thinking about Konopischt. It's the castle he grew up in. Near Prague, if she's not misremembering; he'd talked about it some, one afternoon in Istanbul.

Right, Konopischt, near Prague. There's a lake and a rose garden, and a great round tower… and barking _spiders_, she's got better things to stuff into her attic than what Alek's home is like. She'll never get to see it, for one. For another, it only makes her feel like a silly mooning girl.

Meanwhile, her Clanker finally manages a smile, even if it is tinged with sadness. "Are you staying to breakfast?"

Deryn glances at the door, thinking of the long list of duties she ought to be carrying out and Mr. Rigby's wrath if she's caught skylarking. Then she looks back at Alek.

Easiest barking choice she'll make all day.

"Aye, I think I will," she says, grabbing a chair and a cup. She serves herself coffee and takes gloriously unladylike slurps as Alek eats. They talk for a minute, but he seems to have gone into one of those sad princely moods, and the conversation drops off into silence.

She takes the chance to study him, secretly, over the rim of her cup and under her eyelashes. He sounded surprised that the captain wouldn't want him on the engines. She isn't. She understands Captain Hobbes' thinking – it's one thing to have a Clanker boy getting windblown and grease-smeared and shot at by ninny engineers, but it's quite another to send a _royal_ Clanker boy out there.

It occurs to her that there are maybe downsides to being an archduke. Beyond the bum-rag tutors, the fussy manners, and the barking cluelessness, that is… and the fact that he'll never be able to love a commoner like her.

"D'you really want to be back on the engines?" Deryn asks after a long moment. Bovril gets bored with her shoulder and clambers down to pick at Alek's crumbs and leftovers.

"Yes," he says, setting down his fork very precisely. "But most of all, I would like a trip to the heads to _not_ be the most exciting part of my day."

She laughs mid-drink and snorts a slurp of coffee half up her nose. "Barking spiders!" she exclaims, rubbing the sleeve of her jacket across her face. "Don't crack jokes, _Dummkopf_ - I'm not ready for you to be funny."

"Oh, well, my apologies." He grins at her, really and truly pleased, and she feels a familiar crackle of electricity go dancing across her skin.

And that's sodding daft, because he's not even touching her this time – only looking at her.

But it maybe explains why, when he says, "Care for another fencing lesson before you leave, Mr. Sharp?" she says, "All right, but you'll have to keep the standing dead still to under twenty minutes this time," instead of _Are you mad, Mr. Rigby will kill me if I dawdle any longer_.

Alek neatly folds his napkin and lays it aside as he stands, saying, "I shall make no promises."

Deryn retrieves a mop handle. "Then I can't promise not to give you a good thump on the head with this."

"You won't be able to," he says confidently. "You haven't got the skill or the speed to get past my defense – although I understand Count Volger gave you a few lessons?"

There's an odd note to his voice on those last few words. She gives him a look. He's not jealous, is he? Barking spiders, he'd better not be. Those lessons were awful – and ended up tipping Volger to her secret.

"Aye, he did," she says. "I liked yours better."

"Let's see if you remember anything from either," he says, motioning for her to take her stance. A challenge.

Blisters. She doesn't remember a thing: a lot has happened in the month since that last lesson with Volger. Still, she's good at pretending, so she buys a moment by heaving a resigned sigh and adjusting her grip on the mop handle, all the while thinking furiously about how her feet are supposed to go. Weight on the back foot, aye, and her arm does something daft, like a teacup handle –

"Haven't got the skill," Bovril says cheerily.

She shoots the loris a dark glare and quits trying to pretend.

Alek sighs, being overdramatic about it. "Your stance is still dreadful, Mr. Sharp. In fact, I believe it may be worse than before."

"Aye, forgive me if I've had other things on my mind lately than my barking _stance_," Deryn says, being snappish about it.

"Try it again," he says. She keeps her glare, but follows orders, and he moves closer. "Now –"

_Oh, sod it all_, she thinks, _he's going to pose me again_. And indeed he does, grabbing her arm and adjusting it, nudging her foot back and her knee into bending just a squick more.

Deryn crosses her fingers he'll keep his hands safely away from her chest. She may not have any diddies to speak of, as her brother once thoughtfully pointed out (that bum-rag), but she's still got more than any _Dylan_ ought to. One little slip north, and it's all over. Alek would never be friends with a girl, and that's all a commoner like her can hope for: friends.

…and at the same time, daft mooning girl that she is, her brain gets stuck on Alek, standing right next to her, _touching her_. Electricity burns through her skin wherever his hands go, settling and coiling low in her belly. She finds herself wanting to lean closer towards him; she could stand here and breathe in the smell of him all –

"-turn more like this," he's saying, hands on her waist.

No – hands _above_ her waist. And then, before she can do more than realize _This was a horrible mistake_, one of his fingers stretches that inch too high.

A shock of pure sensation – not good, not bad – kicks her in the gut. She bites down on a yelp and concentrates on holding perfectly still, although her thoughts are instantly racing.

Alek's pure dead clueless most of the time – maybe he won't notice – maybe he'll move his hand before he can realize – maybe he'll think it's only something in her pocket – maybe she should make a joke – would a boy make a joke? – or should she pull away and punch him? – would a boy punch another boy over this? – _and why hasn't he moved his hand yet?_

Deryn glances down. It's only been half a second, really, though it feels ages. His hand is frozen in place, gone stiff like all his gears have rusted.

Helpful as always, the bloody sodding loris says, "_Mr._ Sharp," and giggles.

Then suddenly Alek's halfway across the room, mop handle whacking into the desk and making the cups on the breakfast tray rattle dangerously.

"_Gottes Wunden_," he says, sounding every bit as rattled as the teacups. "You're – I haven't – that is – ?"

"Aye," she says weakly.

Bovril breaks into fresh giggles.

"God's wounds," Alek says again, to himself this time, putting a hand to his forehead. He's gone bright scarlet.

For that matter, Deryn's a bit flushed herself, and she can still feel where that hand was pressed against her side.

Well. Not her _side_, exactly.

She takes a breath and does the hardest thing ever: she looks Alek straight on. He looks back at her, green eyes wide, and for a long moment they simply stare at each other, both of their faces as red as tomatoes.

He looks away first. "I beg your pardon," he says to the teacups, stiffly polite and formal. And embarrassed. She's never thought that "embarrassed" had a sound, but it does.

"It's all right," Deryn says. Her voice has gone high, which isn't so very awful now, and wobbly, which is just annoying. She clears her throat and starts over: "I don't blame you –"

But he's already saying, "I would never have –" and their voices tangle and both of them stop talking at precisely the same time, and they fall into a deadly, painful silence again.

Barking spiders.

Deryn glances at the window. Maybe she should toss herself out and have done.

Or maybe she should stop being a sodding _girl_ and get back to being a proper soldier. Aye, that's it. Accordingly, she straightens her spine and says, "I'd rather you didn't mention this to the captain."

His forehead wrinkles up in confusion. "The captain? Why would – oh. Yes, of course. I mean – of course I won't. And I am really very sorry for – for – ah, touching you. I never expected – well. That you h-had – Um. "

It's a cold sort of comfort, knowing that she made such a pure dead brilliant boy that Alek never suspected a thing until he had his hand square on her chest.

All the same: watching him labor through an apology for grabbing her diddies, while keeping his Clanker modesty intact, is just painful.

"Stop there," she says, uncomfortable and impatient and doing her damnedest not to be embarrassed; _one_ of them ought to get through this without stammering. "No harm done, aye? Blisters, _you_ should be angry with _me_ for lying to you!"

He looks startled, as if that idea hadn't occurred to him yet. "Oh. I suppose I should. I'm certain I will be, actually. Right now I'm rather too, ah, surprised."

"All right, then," she says. Clears her throat. "I'm – going to leave. Mr. Rigby will be looking for me."

He nods mechanically.

She steps backwards, fumbles for the handle, and is on the verge of making her escape when he says suddenly, "Dylan, wait!"

Deryn stops. She even – somehow – lifts her eyes to look him in the face again.

Just in time to see an expression of consternation flash over his features. "But it's not really _Dylan_, is it? Never mind – You'll come back, won't you? And explain… everything?"

"_Mr._ Sharp," Bovril pipes up, chipper as can be. "Beg your pardon. _Mr._ Sharp."

"Aye," she says, swallowing. Later on his gears will have unfrozen and he'll have had time to get properly angry about it all. And what if he decides he doesn't want to hear her explanations? "Only if you promise not to be a bum-rag about it."

Alek's mouth quirks up in a sickly half-grin. "I shall do my best."

Her own grin can't look much better, but she tries. Her hand grips the metal handle and turns it, but she doesn't quite open it yet. Maybe the knowledge that escape is near is what lets her find the courage to blurt it out: "I _wanted_ to tell you. And I should have, ages ago. You're my best friend, aye?"

He seems heartened to hear it, but then that look of consternation returns. "I know that – now isn't really – but… What _is_ your name?"

She takes a breath. "Deryn," she says quietly, mindful of ears on the other side of the aluminium hatch.

"Deryn," he says, testing it, and somehow those two syllables make her feel more exposed than when he had his hand splayed flat across her chest.

A shiver runs down her spine – and like that moment when he touched her, she's not certain if it's good or bad. She nods.

"Deryn," he says again. His fingers flex and curl against his side, as if he's remembering that moment too. She wonders if he even notices. She wonders if he realizes his face has gone pink again.

He meets her eyes. There's a light flickering there she hasn't seen before.

She wonders if maybe it's hatred.

Then she wonders if maybe it's not something else.

"I'll come back quick as I can," she says. And she leaves, before his gears unstick and things go pear-shaped, before the shiver slips down from her spine and into her stomach.

It's a long talk she's not looking forward to, later. And nothing can come of it – she'll still be common as dirt and he'll still be royal. But…

Maybe not such a horrible mistake after all.


	82. the more things change

**Note:** And here is where the spoilers for Goliath begin.

I mean, right away. Lots of 'em.

In every story, pretty much, from here on out.

_You have been warned!_

.

.

.

It takes the _Leviathan_ two days to reach London from New York.

They're two of the best days of Deryn's life.

Of course she's sad to think her time as a middy is almost over. She'll miss the airbeast, miss being yelled at by Mr. Rigby, miss tying knots and scrambling up the ratlines, miss being dorsal on a clear day with the wind pushing hard against her and blue skies all around. She'll miss Newkirk, Dr. Busk's lectures, feeding the fléchette bats, and the potatoes that never quite get cooked through, even when they're half burnt to cinders. She'll miss the pocket of warm, quiet air next to the beastie's skin and the way the cilia ripple. She'll miss the smoke and rumble of the Clanker engines and the thick reek of the gastric channel.

She'll miss flying. She'll miss _everything_.

But for two more days, she still has it all –

- and now she has Alek, too.

Deryn tells the bosun she's right as rain, ignores the pain in her knee, and goes about her duties as always. It's just past midday on the second day when her prince finds her topside.

Alek, of course, is truly only a passenger now – but he has the run of the ship, which is something no other passenger could ever boast. He spent most of the day before on the bridge. ("Though I still don't understand great circle navigation," he'd confided to her at dinner.)

Today it seems he's playing messenger: "Dr. Barlow has requested your presence immediately, Mr. Sharp."

Deryn straightens and puts on her best scowl, pretending for the sake of Mr. Rigby that she's not happy to hear it - that her knee hasn't been aching fiercely for the better part of an hour. "Aye, and what's the lady boffin want this time – or are we not meant to know?"

Alek shrugs. "I assume it's regarding London."

They're due to arrive in London that night, and everyone's been getting an earful about tricky night landings from the officers. Deryn looks to the bosun – who dismisses her with a curt nod – and begins picking her way down the ratlines with her prince, complaining loudly: "She couldn't send a sodding lizard to tell me?"

"I volunteered," Alek says. Then, soft enough that the words will only be for her, he adds, "But I may have been mistaken. She may not have said _immediately_."

The words are perfectly innocent, but they send a shiver of excitement down her spine.

"Well, Clanker, that's why it's better to send a message lizard," Deryn says, keeping her voice matter-of-fact for the benefit of any riggers within earshot. "They don't make such a hash of it, normally."

They reach the gondola and clamber inside. "You are quite correct, Mr. Sharp," Alek says with a small bow.

" 'Course I am," she says, only to feel her knee buckle with the first step off the ladder. She puts out a hand for the wall, swearing, and Alek is beside her in an instant, taking the weight on her left side. "Sod it all! Why's it still doing that?"

"You need to rest it," he says.

"I _need_ to be up there," she says, glancing upwards at the great airbeast she can't see through the gondola. "While I still can."

He doesn't say anything, but the hand on her waist tightens, and his eyes are worried.

Deryn sighs. Eases away from him – she's not going to limp through the corridors on his shoulder, especially not with Dr. Busk wandering about, just looking for reasons to keep her off the ratlines. "I'll rest it for a minute. Then we'll go see what the lady boffin wants, aye? Where's Bovril?"

"My stateroom." He smiles. "Napping."

They go to her cabin. She manages not to stumble or stagger or grab for the walls again along the way, but there's no denying her exhale of relief when she plunks herself down onto the bed and stuffs her pillow under her knee.

She ought to have taken off her flight suit first, seeing as how it's covered with grime and bat clart and who knows what else. To blazes with it, she decides; her knee hurts. She shifts around, back against the curving rail at the head, getting comfortable. "Barking spiders, that's better."

Alek carefully closes her cabin door. "Once we're in London, I think you should see another doctor. Perhaps Dr. Busk's treatment wasn't as effective as it might have been."

Deryn rolls her eyes. Just like him to forget: doctors cost money, which neither of them has. Then again, Dr. Barlow surely knows half the doctors in London; one of them must be willing to do the lady boffin a favor and look at an ex-middy's dodgy knee. "If I'd kept off it properly like he ordered, you mean?"

He nods.

She pretends to have a think on that. "They'll probably set me on bed rest."

"Most likely." He sits on the bed beside her, and she inches towards the wall so he'll have more room.

"That's pure dead boring, you know," she says, lacing their fingers together where their hands lay side-by-side.

He curls his fingers tight around hers. Smirks. "Indeed."

She grins at him. Sitting like this, they're eye-to-eye; and close as they are, she can see his dark green eyes just fine. Another shiver runs through her. "I'll need something to do while I'm laying about, then. Any ideas, your princeliness?"

"Perhaps a few," he says, and kisses her.

Deryn's half-ashamed to say she's lost count of their kisses already; there's been that many since they left New York. Every chance they get, it seems, they're sneaking off to a cabin or just to some dark corner.

It's not very soldierly, all this shirking and skylarking for the sake of kissing, but… barking spiders, with Alek, it's like flying while you're standing still. Pure dead exciting.

Her heart always pounds like mad, and her skin prickles all over, and there's a very pleasant warmth that loops and settles low in her guts. That last feeling she doesn't get from flying. Only Alek.

She closes her eyes, puts her arms around him, and pulls him closer.

The angle makes kissing a bit awkward, but it's not uncomfortable. Certainly it's not so uncomfortable that she feels inclined to stop. She leans into her friend, the warmth of him, the familiarity of him, feeling a hard, sharp burst of joy in her chest.

This kissing business is quite fun.

Or at least it is until someone raps on the cabin door.

Her eyes pop open and she pushes Alek away, hurriedly swinging her injured leg back atop the pillow and straightening her flight suit where it's been crushed between them. He stands (nearly falls, getting off the bed – maybe she shouldn't have pushed him so hard) and smoothes out his own clothes just as Dr. Barlow sweeps in.

The lady boffin pauses and glances between Alek and Deryn, who are doing their best not to look guilty or to look at one another. They're failing. Barking miserably.

"My," she says mildly. "It's like that already, is it?"

Deryn says, "I was resting my knee, ma'am, like Dr. Busk ordered. Alek was just making certain I had everything in place."

The lady boffin looks amused. "And he's to be commended for a most thorough examination, it seems."

Alek frowns. He's half scarlet, and his hair's mussed, but he frowns like a prince, and he draws himself up, and he says, "We aren't –"

Dr. Barlow waves him to silence. "It's simple biology; nothing to protest. Though I see the wisdom in knocking," she says to Deryn. "I shall endeavor to do so from now on."

Deryn swallows, thinking about what might've happened if the lady boffin _hadn't_ knocked before she came barging in. Just because she's keen on kissing Alek doesn't mean she's keen on other people staring at them while she does so. "Aye, thanks, ma'am," she says, rubbing at her shoulder awkwardly.

"And _you_ shall endeavor to stay apart until we are safely arrived and disembarked." Dr. Barlow looks between them again and _tsk_s. "I won't have you being found out this close to the end, Mr. Sharp. I will be most cross if I cannot have two assistants merely because you allowed your biological urges to overpower you."

"Aye ma'am," Deryn mumbles, at the same time Alek says, "I haven't agreed to be your _assistant_."

Dr. Barlow raises an eyebrow. "No? You may wish to speak to your fencing tutor, Aleksandar. Plans have already been made on your behalf."

"Plotters," the loris on her shoulder says, giggling.

"Shush," the lady boffin tells it, though she doesn't seemed displeased with its assessment. She turns her attention back to Deryn and Alek. "Up and out, gentlemen. We shall continue this conversation in my cabin."

Deryn reluctantly leaves the bed, wincing when her bad knee takes her weight. Alek puts a hand on her back as they leave the cabin. It's a comfort rather than any real help, and he drops his hand as soon as they're out in the corridor. But she knows what he means by it.

_We pick each other up_, she thinks.

She won't be a midshipman much longer. He won't ever be an emperor. They'll leave the _Leviathan_ behind and go onward, to adventures in other places, with people and beasties and machines they've never heard of. Someday they'll get up to more than just kissing; someday they'll be properly wed, and have children, and teach them to fence and tie knots - the daughters as well as the sons.

And they'll pick each other up when they fall. They'll save each other for the rest of their lives.

That sharp, hard happiness stays with her all the way to London.


	83. money, honey

"Must I do this now?"

Deryn glances up from counting money into his palm. "If you want breakfast, aye."

Alek doesn't quite stifle a sigh. It turns into a yawn, which he can't stop either. His breath plumes in the frigid December air. "It's so _early_."

"Breakfast usually is."

"That's not what I meant."

"Aye, you meant you don't want to hurt your poor princely brain with all this commoner _work_." She pushes one last coin into his palm with rather more force than is necessary, and gives him an irritated glare.

"No," he says, closing his hand around the money. "I most certainly did not mean _that_. But can't I buy lunch? Or dinner?"

"I want breakfast, Clanker."

Alek sighs again. It's useless to argue with Deryn in regards to food, and a trifle dangerous to keep her hungry.

He looks about the bustling London street. He's a bit hazy on their precise location, perhaps because he was still half-asleep when Deryn dragged him out of bed and into the city. Or perhaps because he has only been in the city for less than a week.

Or perhaps because London is immense and every street is bewilderingly _foreign_: animal smells and noises that never cease; buildings ornamented with swirls, curves, and carvings of bizarre creatures; and a cacophony of accents that manages to occasionally overwhelm his understanding of English, much to his annoyance.

This place is no different. They're in some sort of market, thronged with people buying for the holiday, and vendors are selling every foodstuff imaginable. "What would you like?" he asks, somewhat helplessly.

She shrugs. "I'm not choosy."

This is true, but doesn't help him make a decision. Alek picks a stall at random and points to it. "How about that?"

She follows his finger and brightens. "Oh, aye, perfect! – I haven't had a pasty in ages. Now go buy one for each of us."

"Ah," he says, swallowing around a sudden burst of nerves. Inwardly, he chides himself: he's a prince – might have been an emperor – he can't possibly be intimidated by the thought of buying himself and his friend some breakfast in a London market.

And yet he remembers how utterly foolish he felt in Lienz, attempting to purchase newspapers. He'd allowed his men to handle the hotel payments in Istanbul under the pretense of deceiving any snooping German agents, but in truth he hadn't wanted to risk repeating his dismal performance.

Even here, he has handed control of his finances (such as they are) to Volger... and to Deryn, who has been minding his pocket money these last few days.

He looks down at the coins in his hands and then at Deryn, half-expecting censure for his dawdling. She doesn't look impatient; in fact, she looks concerned. "It's all right," she says softly, momentarily dropping her Dylan voice. "Here. How many shillings d'you have?"

Alek tries to remember which ones are shillings. It ought to be easy – so far, the only coins he knows are British. But they're all so _similar, _and relative size is no sure indicator of value. "Seven. And… six pence."

"Aye. So you'll give the man these –" she taps some of the coins – "and he'll give you back some in change. Count it, when he does, so you know he's not cheated you. How many pence to a shilling?"

This one he knows: "Twelve. And there are twenty shillings to a pound."

She smiles. "Not bad, your princeliness."

He smiles back, absurdly pleased with the praise, but feels compelled to add, "That doesn't make any sense, you know. Why not set everything in units of ten, rather than twelve for this and twenty for that?"

Deryn rolls her eyes. "Because everyone in Britain is daft. Quit blethering and go buy breakfast, _Dummkopf_!"

Alek jingles the coins in his fist, sets his jaw, and goes forth.

There's a small crowd for the stall, and more than one person working it. When Alek reaches the front, he finds himself facing a short, round woman with a florid face and grey hair tucked beneath a kerchief. "What'll you have, lovey?" she says, in such a cheerfully broad accent that it takes him a moment to understand the question.

"Ah – two, please," he says, gesturing, suddenly conscious of his own accent. She doesn't appear to notice. In scarcely a blink, she has two of the pasties wrapped in newspaper and is handing them over.

He glances over his shoulder at Deryn, who's grinning at him, then turns back to the vendor and fumbles to give her his money.

Her end of the transaction is accomplished much more quickly. She drops a smattering of coins into his hand along with an admonition to enjoy his holiday, and moves on to the next customer. Alek steps aside and returns to Deryn, immensely relieved to be done with it.

"Brilliant," she says, plucking one of the newspaper bundles from his hand. She unwraps it to a great waft of savory steam. "Mm, and it smells barking delicious. Did you count your change?"

"No," he says.

"Do it right now, then."

He does, slowly and awkwardly (why are all of these coins so _similar_?), then looks up at her to confirm his calculation.

"Aye, dead right," she says, satisfied. "And you knew sod all about money two days ago. I'll have you haggling like a proper housewife in no time!"

"Wonderful," Alek says drily, though he feels more than a little proud. The woman hadn't given him a pitying glance, or acted as if he was a fool, or seemed to notice in any way that – at sixteen years old – this is only the second time in his life that he's purchased something on his own.

Deryn has been independently buying things, if her account's to be believed, since she was less than half his age. But he was never intended to handle money, and so it _is_ an accomplishment, however small.

He adds, "I look forward to wearing the apron."

She laughs and starts eating. He watches her for a moment, smiling, thinking of other things that he might buy. Things that he might buy for _her_.

A sketchbook, perhaps, and some pencils. Yes; she would like that. And surely he has enough money left. He fingers the coins still in his possession and tucks them away.

Deryn nudges him with her elbow and says, mouth full, "Eat your breakfast, ninny, it's getting cold."

"Aye, Mr. Sharp," Alek says, just to hear her laugh again. And then he eats his breakfast.


	84. home health care

Alek's sitting on the sofa, reading, when Deryn comes in. Without a word, she sits beside him, swings her leg up into his lap, and settles back against the armrest.

He looks at her, eyebrow raised. "Something I might help you with?"

She gestures at her knee. "It's aching today."

It's always aching; she just rarely complains. He therefore puts his book aside and carefully kneads his fingers into the tired muscles and tendons around her knee.

She groans theatrically – in bliss. "I may have to marry you."

"You already did," he points out, and leans over, and kisses her.


	85. in the midnight hour, part 2

Alek wakes with the scent of burnt flesh thick on his tongue.

For a moment he is in a blind panic. He needs to stand, he needs to escape – he needs to _find her_ –

As soon as his feet hit the polished, fabricated wood floor of his borrowed room, however, his mind clears somewhat. He takes a breath. Looks around. Tries to calm his racing pulse with rational thoughts.

He is not in Goliath's control room. Nikola Tesla is not about to fire and send the _Leviathan_ bursting into flames.

And Deryn is not in danger. She's safely asleep down the hall.

He pushes his hands through his hair, refusing to notice that they're shaking. What he should do, of course, is calm down, climb back into bed, and try to go to sleep again. What he should _not_ do is walk down the hall, wake Deryn, and make certain that she's all right.

She'll be furious if he wakes her up.

But then again – she is familiar with nightmares.

And right now he could very much use a friend.

Accordingly, he pulls the dressing gown over his nightshirt, eases his door open, and slips down the darkened hall to her room. The floorboards of Darwinist houses don't creak, he's noticed, and it's a blessing right now, because he'd rather not awaken Count Volger or any of the Barlows.

Deryn's door is shut, and he hesitates only a moment before he turns the knob and lets himself in.

She is, of course, asleep – sprawled, blanket tangled, mouth slack, one arm and leg flung out and hanging over the edge of the bed. Bovril has been reduced to curling up on a nearby armchair, possibly for its own safety.

Alek smiles despite himself: she doesn't even sleep like a girl.

He leaves the door slightly ajar (for propriety's sake) and crosses the room to stand beside the bed. "Deryn," he says softly, first touching her shoulder and then shaking it, gently, when she doesn't respond. He says her name more loudly.

She twitches, then blinks, stirs, and looks up at him with a bleary glare that could nonetheless melt steel. "_What_?"

Feeling all of five years old, he says, "I had a nightmare."

She groans and sits up, rubbing at her eyes with the heels of her hands. "Barking spiders, Alek, I was dead asleep. What time is it?"

"I'm not certain."

"Brilliant," she mutters. Her hair is sticking every which way, and she's still glaring at him. The bedsheets have left red lines imprinted on the side of her face as well; he wonders, fleetingly, how long she was lying in that position. She yawns. "Where's Bovril?"

"Over there," Alek says, nodding at the chair.

Bovril lifts its head long enough to say, "I was dead asleep," in a fair approximation of Deryn's aggrieved tone. Then it curls up again, apparently done with them.

Deryn sighs, scrubs a hand over her face, and looks at Alek. "What sort of nightmare?"

He hesitates. "About Tesla."

"Aye, that nutter would give anyone a fright." She tilts her head, studying him for a moment, then sighs and moves over on the bed, patting the empty space beside her. "Come on, then. Lay your head and tell me about it."

A flip of panic. "But we shouldn't –"

She grabs his wrist and pulls him sharply down, so that his choices are to fall flat on his face or climb into the bed. He chooses the bed – though he's careful to stay atop the covers.

It takes a few moments of arranging, but eventually they sort themselves out: side-by-side, facing one another in the darkness. He's more than close enough to kiss her, and he knows if he does, she would kiss him back, and _that_ would be a fine distraction indeed from the lingering unease of his dream… but that's not the type of comfort he's come seeking.

Her eyes are grey in the shadows, her hair silver-white, and her voice is soft. "Tell me."

He takes a breath to begin, and the full horror comes crashing back. He swallows, tasting smoke, hearing the unnatural drone of the Goliath. It threatens to overwhelm him.

Somewhat blindly, he reaches out for Deryn's hand.

She catches hold; their fingers weave together. Her grip is reassuringly hard.

He takes another breath. This one turns into an unsteady chuckle. "I'm sorry to be such a _Dummkopf_ about it."

"It's all right, Alek," she says. A grin flickers. "I'll only tease you once or twice."

He finds he's able to smile in return, and squeezes her hand. She scoots a few inches closer, so that their foreheads are touching, and the last threads of his anxiety unwind themselves.

His friend. No matter what else she may be, she is first and foremost his friend, and he can tell her anything.

They have no secrets.

"I killed a man," he says quietly, closing his eyes. "I suppose I ought to have nightmares."

"Aye, maybe," she says. Her breath tickles against his face. "But he was mad, Alek, thinking to kill millions of people like that. And I wouldn't be alive if you hadn't."

"I know." Without quite meaning to, he shifts his grip on her hand so that his thumb is gently rubbing across her rough, scarred airman's knuckles. "Small comfort, though, in the middle of a bad dream."

She _hmms_ under her breath. For a long moment neither of them say anything, and he wonders if she isn't going back to sleep.

Then she says, "Mine's always the same. The balloon catches, Da pushes me out, and then I watch it burn. Sometimes I know it's a dream, but I can't change anything. Those're the worst, aye? Being helpless."

He opens his eyes and nods. Swallows the taste of charred flesh. Confesses: "He wasn't dead, in my dream. He was - _burnt_ - but he wasn't dead. He... he got up and fired Goliath, and I couldn't stop him... And I watched you burn."

Much to his dismay, Alek finds himself on the verge of tears. He blinks hard. God's wounds. Perhaps he can still blame it on his cracked skull.

Deryn shakes her hand free of his and puts her arms around his shoulders, pulling him close against her, head to toe, the blanket crumpled between them. "Just a dream," she whispers into his ear, breath warm, voice hitching. "Just a dream, love."

It's that one, small, final word that does it – that drags him fully out of dreamland and into the present. He presses his face into her neck and breathes in the warm, _living_ scent of her. She strokes his hair the way a mother might. And he doesn't cry – but it's a near thing indeed.

"Thank you," he whispers after a while. "Thank you, Deryn. _Meine_ _Liebe_."

"Keep on like that," she says quietly, amusement in her voice, "and I reckon we'll be awake for another reason."

He is suddenly, keenly aware of how closely they are pressed together, how still the rest of the house is... how lovely it would feel to kiss her... and slide beneath the blanket... and kiss her again...

"Perhaps I should go, then," he says, common sense warring with somewhat baser instincts.

She stifles a yawn and disentangles herself from him, resettling a safe distance away. "Aye, if you want. Think you'll have another nightmare?"

He rolls onto his back and briefly presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. "No. Though I doubt I shall sleep well now, regardless."

"Poor boy," she says. Grinning.

He smiles at her in return, then - quickly - swoops over and gives her a kiss. He means it to be square on her lips, but his aim is imperfect, and half of it catches her cheek. She sputters and snickers and tries to grab him, but he's already making his escape.

"Thank you," he says from the door, putting his nightclothes to rights. "I will see you in the morning."

"G'night, Alek," she says. Yawns hugely and flops back onto the bed, drawing the blankets up after her. "For what it's worth - I'm barking glad you didn't let him do it."

He watches her wallow, as unladylike as ever, and smiles again.

"So am I," he says, perhaps too quietly for her to hear.

He sleeps well after all.


	86. terms of endearment

**Note:** This one is exceptionally sugary and sweet, even by my (highly fluffy) standards. Too much pre-Halloween candy? Maybe. Or maybe it's a sign that it's time for another horribly, horribly depressing lil' series like "trapped on the wire". You know you want it. :P

.

.

.

"_Prinzessin_," Alek suggests, teasing.

For a moment Deryn wonders if she ought to be angry. She'll never be a princess, after all, and it seems a squick cruel to shove her nose into that fact.

But that's not like him, and besides, she's not of a mood to be angry just now.

"Not bloody likely," she says, smirking.

Belatedly, his eyes widen, and he colors. "I didn't mean –"

She puts a stop to all that blether by holding up one hand. "Aye, I know. Daft prince."

"Sometimes, unfortunately." He clears his throat. "_Engel_? You do like to fly."

She snorts and slouches lower in her chair, grinning at him over the top of her book. It was written by old Darwin himself, and she has no idea what it's about, but it's heavy enough to stun an elephantine. "Do I _look_ like a sodding angel?"

Alek doesn't answer straightaway, the ninny. Of course she doesn't look like an angel. Her hair needs a trim, her tie's crooked, and she stayed up nearly all the night translating and then reading a paper by some Clanker fellow named Boelcke, about fighting tactics for aeroplanes and gyrothopters. She knows she looks a fright.

He gets that daft expression on his face, though, and she thinks he's going to say, _Yes, you do_.

_Dummkopf_. If either of them look heavenly this morning, it's him. His shirt is clean and pressed, his trousers new, boots polished, and his hair (except for that one curl which never stays put) is neatly combed. It's the middle of winter, but he puts her in mind of a crisp red apple, shined up and fresh.

Aye, and she'd like to take a bite of him, all right.

She drops her eyes to her book, hoping she's not turning pink. Blisters, it's a bit embarrassing, isn't it? – to _still_ be mooning like this, after all the kissing they've done? At least there's no one else in the Barlows' library right now to catch her. Dr. Barlow's supposed to be chaperoning them today, but she's barking terrible at it.

Deryn had been a bit perplexed about that, at first. The lady boffin is so tiresome the rest of the time…

…but then again: who's she to complain?

Perhaps Dr. Barlow is relying on Bovril to be a chaperon in her absence. If so, she'll be sorely disappointed. The wee beastie is too busy napping on a footstool in the one beam of sunlight.

Deryn looks at it now: curled up, its little ears twitching every once in a while. Being off the _Leviathan_ seems to have made the lorises pure dead lazy. 'Course, she and Alek aren't much better. It's been nearly a month and most of that time has seen their bums planted in a chair and their eyes in a book – orders of Dr. Barlow.

She should've known a boffin's house would be like this.

Alek coughs, lays his book aside (it's about life-threads and heredity, which she knows because he's been complaining about it all morning), and rises from his chair, saying, "Perhaps not an angel. Perhaps a more dangerous creature."

She quirks up an eyebrow. "Like what, your princeliness? I didn't think Clankers had a word for tigeresque."

"I suppose _Tiger_ would work," he says, sitting beside her on the sofa. She scoots over a squick, so he'll have enough room (though being too close to each other really isn't much of problem). "But I was thinking of something like – _Honigbienchen_."

Deryn rolls her eyes. _Little honeybee_. Pure dead obnoxious, and he knows it, judging by the smug grin that keeps flickering out from behind that princely mask. "Only if you fancy another punch to the stomach."

"No," Alek says, turning serious again, "but what _am_ I to call you?"

"My name, aye?" He frowns at that, so she lifts her hand and runs it gently through his hair, fingering the one curl that won't stay in place. "I like hearing you say it," she adds softly.

Alek catches her hand and presses a brief kiss to her knuckles. "Deryn."

"See? Brilliant." She smiles at him for a moment, then goes back to her book. This chapter seems to be about barnacles. No mention of the vitriolic sort, though, which is a mistake, in Deryn's opinion, as they're the only interesting -

A hand plucks the book from hers, and before she can do more than cry out indignantly, Alek has it set on the table beside him, out of her reach.

"You bum-rag!" she says. "I was reading that!"

Sort of, anyway.

"I should be allowed to call you by _some_ pet name," he says, sounding a bit indignant himself. "Even Mr. Barlow can say 'my dear' once in a while."

"Aye, but _we're_ not married," she retorts.

That daft look comes over him again, and – mooning lassie that she is – her heart skips and then thumps heavily against her ribs. _Yet_, is the unspoken promise in Alek's eyes. They're not married… yet.

Blisters.

Deryn might have to take a bite out of him after all.

Something of what she's thinking must show on her face, because he flushes red again, and he looks at the floor and clears his throat once or twice. Clanker.

"Still," he says, shifting a bit on the sofa. "What are you going to call me?"

" 'Alek', mostly," she says. "Probably 'daft prince' once in a while. And _'Dummkopf'_ when you deserve it. Right now, for instance. If I'm walking about as Dylan, it's going to be barking tricky to explain why you're calling me your little honeybee, aye?"

"I wouldn't say it where people could _hear_," he says, scandalized.

She'd thought it was funny, when he'd brought it up – the idea of giving each other pet names – and that's why she's gone along with it even this far. But this conversation is ridiculous. He seems to be dead serious, though, and that makes no sense at all.

Deryn shakes her head. "What's the point, anyway? Why're we talking about silly daft names for each other?"

He doesn't say anything for a long moment. He keeps staring at the floor, but his hand finds hers, and he weaves their fingers together.

Then, quietly, with a touch of that old sadness, he says: "My parents had endearments for one another. I suppose… I thought it would be… nice."

Oh, sod it all. Now she feels pure dead horrible.

She squeezes his fingers and moves closer. "Alek," she says.

He looks at her.

He has the most brilliant green eyes. Even when they're sad.

" 'Love'," Deryn says softly, hoping he can see the promise in her own eyes. "I'm going to call you 'love'."

And then she presses her mouth to his. Gently, carefully, sweetly. And she doesn't stop until he makes a little sighing noise and relaxes under her. Then she draws back and squeezes his hand once again.

"I think – I think that should do fine," he says, managing a crooked sort of smile. "And I shall follow your example, _Liebe_."

"Aye, that's barking clever of you," she says – or starts to, because he stops her with a kiss.

And that's quite clever of him, too.


	87. letter

_Dear Ma –_

_I'm in London and I'm off the _Leviathan_. Sorry for not writing but I've been sodding busy. And sorry for cursing just now. It's tricky not to. Middies are supposed to swear so I've got used to it._

_My secret's safe, don't worry. I'm Dr. Barlow's personal assistant now. She's a lady boffin and the head keeper of the London Zoo. And she's a __Darwin__! __She knows the truth about me and thinks it's brilliant. Probably because she's a sneaky-beak herself._

_But Ma that's not the most important thing. I have to tell you about Alek. That's Prince Aleksandar, the archduke's son. He works for Dr. Barlow too now. If the papers at home are like the ones in New York I'm sure you've seen him. Don't believe any of their blether, though – those bum-rag reporters always get it wrong._

_Alek's dead amazing, Ma, and he loves me. Dr. Barlow says she'll have everything here sorted in a month or so, and then Alek and I can come to Glasgow so you can meet him. That __sodding__ Count Volger will have to come too but it's worth it. Alek's worth everything._

_I know you thought it was going to be a barking disaster, me joining the Air Service, but it was the best ever._

_Love,  
__Deryn_

"Who's that from, Janet love?"

Mrs. Sharp absently wipes the tear away from her cheek and gives her sister a wide smile. "It's Deryn. You'll never guess what my girl's got herself into now."


	88. comfort and joy

**Note:** This is gonna be a multi-parter, if the spirits are willing. (Reader, I have so many chapters _almost finished_. It's driving me crazy, it really is.)

.

.

.

Deryn arranges the scarf around his neck, looping it into a tidy knot. It's a needless gesture – he is perfectly capable of doing it himself – but one that is kindly meant, and Alek appreciates it.

"Thank you," he says softly, reaching up to briefly rest one hand over hers, trapping it against his chest.

She gives him a smile, then steps back and tugs her own scarf into place, wrapping it once and carelessly flicking the loose end over her shoulder. Then she grabs her cane and jams a woolen flat cap onto her head, saying, "Don't go forgetting your hat, your princeliness; it's barking nasty out there this morning."

"There is no pleasant weather in this country," Count Volger says, joining them where they stand in the Barlows' foyer.

Despite his heavy mood, Alek's mouth twitches in amusement. Volger makes a new disparaging comment about Britain every day – and, sometimes, more frequently. "It does snow in Austria as well, Count."

"Fah," Volger says, succinct. He is carrying his gloves and hat, and impatiently drums one finger against the brim. "Have you finished grooming him, girl? We shall be late."

Deryn scowls. "Aye, if you're finally done mucking about with breakfast."

While they bicker, Alek collects Bovril, who has been patiently sitting on a side table throughout the process of pulling on coats, scarves, and gloves. He opens his coat and jacket just far enough to allow the loris to creep inside, then buttons it up snugly. It _is_ cold outside, and he doesn't want Bovril to take ill.

Bovril settles itself, its tiny claws dragging at Alek's shirtfront as it gets comfortable. It makes a lulling _hmm_ that Alek also appreciates for the kindness that it is.

"Enough," Alek tells his tutor and his friend. "This isn't the day for it."

They subside, and, pleased to have wrought peace in this small kingdom, Alek begins towards the door. Behind him, Volger says, "Your hat, Aleksandar."

"Right," Alek says, mouth twitching again. He will have two minders now, it seems.

The hat was an excellent suggestion, it turns out. Snow swirls down in fat wet flakes, ghostlike in the glow from the streetlights, and the cold cuts into every exposed inch of skin.

Alek experienced many frigid winters in Konopischt, but there is something about being in a city that makes it infinitely more miserable. "God's wounds," he says, hunching his shoulders and pushing his hands into his pockets.

"It'll be lovely by the time the sun's up," Deryn says. She tilts her head back and sticks out her tongue, trying to catch snowflakes. Grinning. "White rooftops everywhere – like a fairytale city, aye?"

"A city six inches deep in mud by tomorrow," Volger says. "Your Highness, the carriage -?"

_"Carriage"_ is perhaps too grand a word for it. It's a weatherbeaten taxi, drawn by one of those large, dumb, fabricated beasts that seem to be a mixture of many large, dumb, natural beasts. Regardless of its life threads, it looks not at all perturbed by the cold or the wet.

Neither does the driver, sitting hunched atop the box, fixing a pipe under the shelter of his hat. The flare of a match casts the man's face in stark crags and shadows. He nods at them and mumbles something that may or may not be a greeting.

There's no reason to stand aside and hold a taxi door open for Dylan Sharp, but Alek does anyway. She gives him a smirk as she clambers inside. He follows her, and settles into the seat across from her. Volger comes up last, giving directions to the driver as he does.

The door has barely closed before the driver is whipping up the beastie and the taxi is lurching forward. Alek leans sideways so that he can peer through the small, weather-grimed window at the dark, pre-dawn streets.

London. His new home.

He closes his eyes. So much has happened since the night of 28th June – so much has changed – sometimes it seems as though the first sixteen years of his life were a dream.

And sometimes it feels as though he'll awaken any moment and find that that the war, the _Leviathan_, and Deryn Sharp were all merely imagination.

A booted foot nudges his. He opens his eyes and looks at her.

"Don't fall asleep now, you daft prince," she says. A wry smile curves her mouth. "We've still a whole service to sit through."

"I'm not tired," he says. Bovril shifts inside his coat, peeking its nose out from behind the scarf, then shivering and curling close again. "Merely thinking."

Volger harrumphs, but holds his comments to himself.

Alek resumes looking out the window. Now, however, he makes a point of nudging Deryn's foot with his, every once and a while. She always nudges back.

They reach their destination soon enough, given the weather, although they're obliged by the traffic to stop some distance away from the doors. Volger pays the taxi driver while Alek and Deryn wait on the sidewalk. She grimaces and leans on her cane, shifting the weight from her bad knee.

"Is your knee hurting?" he asks.

She shakes her head, and the grimace disappears behind a quick, blue-eyed grin. "Not a squick."

For a moment he is irrationally angry with her - wants to grab her by the arm and tell her _Stop pretending, stop being the tough airman, I know it hurts!_

Just as quickly, the feeling disappears, leaving guilt in its wake. He isn't, he knows, angry with her.

He pushes his hands into his coat pockets and studies the way his breath plumes in the frigid, snow-blown air. The light is strengthening, and there are more people arriving all the time.

Volger rejoins them with a curt, "Well, Your Highness?"

Alek looks at the red-and-white brick walls and the soaring bell tower of Westminster Cathedral. At the small crowd climbing the steps, solemn and festive all at once on this early Christmas morning, as they come to hear the Dawn Mass.

"I'm ready," he says. But he wonders if that isn't a lie.


	89. it's the thought that counts

**Note:** This chapter and the next were written for a Christmas contest over on DeviantArt. Merry Chrismakkuh! :D

.

.

.

"Do you remember," Alek says, setting a fresh cup of coffee on the table beside Deryn, "when I first met your mother and aunts?"

"Aye," she says absently. Her attention is largely on the scene playing out on the floor in front of her, as well as the sketchbook in her hands – a large new one that Alek gave her barely an hour earlier, when they exchanged Christmas gifts.

He takes a drink of his own coffee before placing it on the table, too. "I said that you'd been exaggerating."

"Mm."

"I said that they were hardly as awful as you made them sound."

"So you did."

He crouches and collects their infant daughter in one arm and Bovril in the other. Sophie waves her chubby hands madly, delighted to be hoisted, more delighted to fling herself about at this height. The loris clings to Alek's shirtfront and trembles with the intensity of its dislike for the gaily colored pullover it's wearing.

Red, green, white. A pattern of holly sprigs and frolicking reindeer around the middle. Knitted with love – or possibly deep malevolence – by Deryn's aunts and mother in Glasgow.

It exactly matches Sophie's new pullover.

Alek examines his daughter and his loris and concludes, "Clearly, I was mistaken."

Deryn makes an impatient noise. "Quit moving them about - let me finish this picture so we can send it to Ma and prove they wore her barking ugly jumpers. Then we'll toss the things in the bin, aye?"

"I suppose that's enough," he says, casting a glance at the merry fire snapping and crackling in the hearth. It would be satisfying… but rather childish.

"And I asked her to send something we could sodding _use_," Deryn adds in a disgruntled undertone. She draws some more while Alek dandles Sophie on his knee and does his best to soothe Bovril's wounded dignity.

"There we are," she says at length. She puts away the sketchbook and pencil and downs her coffee in a long, unladylike gulp before reaching over and plucking Sophie from him. Sophie kicks her feet happily, then squeals as Deryn obligingly tosses her up and catches her. "Blisters, this is ugly. We'll tell Ma she outgrew it."

"She's visiting next month," he points out, working on removing Bovril's pullover while Deryn tries to get Sophie out of hers. The loris seems to be much more cooperative about the process than their daughter. "No baby grows that fast."

Deryn frowns, then flashes a wicked grin. "Then we'll say she was sick all over it."

"It's certainly making _me_ nauseous," Alek says.

She laughs at him, then stands, baby on one hip and horrid pullover in one hand. "Poor prince," she says, lightly grasping his chin and pretending to look him over. "Aye, you look dead awful. Maybe you ought to spend the rest of Christmas in bed."

"Maybe," he says, taking her hand from his chin and kissing the palm. "But no one should be alone on Christmas."

"Mm," she says. The wicked grin returns, and she stoops low enough to brush a kiss across his lips. He holds her in place when she attempts to back away, however, and the kiss deepens into something slow, warm, and full of promise.

She still makes his breath catch and his heart hammer. He supposes she always will; and it isn't as though he minds. "Do you think we can persuade Sophie to go down for a nap?"

"At barely nine in the morning? _Our_ bonnie wee lass? Not sodding likely." Deryn shifts their daughter, who is busily cramming one small, fat fist into her mouth. "Come on, Clanker, I'm still hungry, and you're going to fix me Christmas breakfast."

"Again," he agrees, standing.

She snorts and rolls her eyes, and he laughs, and they make their way to the kitchen, the hideous pullovers lying in a forgotten heap behind them.

.

.

.

Bovril stares at the discarded pullovers for a long, long moment, its fur bristling high.

It does not like them. At all.

They are not even worthy of being used as bedding.

"Most undignified," it says quietly.

Laughter and low voices drift from elsewhere in the house. The loris flicks its ears forward and back, trying to listen, then decides that its People are occupied, and are likely to continue being occupied for some while.

The time is right.

Accordingly, it carefully picks up one pullover at a time, using its paws and its teeth, and carries them both to the fireplace. Then it settles itself on a nearby cushion and watches the hated fabric burn.

Alek and _Mr_. Sharp should like that.

Bovril certainly does.

"God bless us, every one," it mumbles, quite satisfied with its work, and goes to sleep.


	90. christmas eve will find me

"Ill?" Alek repeats, incredulous. For a moment he wonders if he hasn't misheard; but his French is not as poor as that. "How can an airship be _ill_?"

The ticket agent sniffs and says, "I am sure I do not know, _monsieur_. I am not a fabricator."

A bubble of sick panic rises in Alek's chest. No. It can't end like this – their mad dash across half of Europe, dodging bad weather and worse politics. He's in Calais. He has an entire day left in which to reach London.

And Deryn.

_Midnight, Christmas Eve. Just you and me and some mistletoe, aye?_

_We shall hardly need the excuse, Liebe. But - I promise to be home._

He forces the panic down and straightens to his full height, assuming what he hopes is an air of implacable calm. "When will it be well again?"

"That is for the captain to judge," the man says, as if Alek has insulted him by asking. "Perhaps… a week, I should think."

Two months ago, Alek would have spoken sharply at this juncture. He would have, perhaps, borrowed a phrase or two from Deryn and roundly told the ticket agent exactly what he thought of such incompetence and insolence and sodding _inconvenience_.

But now the weight of his new title lies stiffly across his shoulders. He says only, "Then I shall need to exchange tickets for another flight."

The ticket agent says, without a trace of regret, "I am so sorry, _monsieur_, but there are no other flights today."

Title or not, Alek's composure shatters. "It's Christmas Eve!" he exclaims, furious. "Why aren't –"

Count Volger puts a hand on his shoulder. "Your Highness," he says. Warning. To the ticket agent, he says crisply, "See to it that our luggage is returned."

"Of course, sir," the ticket agent says, gives a slight incline of the head that might be considered a bow if one was being _very_ generous, and unhurriedly leaves the counter.

"I'm beginning to hate France," Alek says in German, glaring at the man's back.

Volger harrumphs. "Melodrama does not befit a duke of Austria."

"Neither does breaking promises," Alek snaps. He turns and strides away, towards the doors of the airship terminal. "Come on. There must be another way to get home before midnight."

There isn't.

There are no other scheduled flights, and there are no other airships whose beasts are not ill, whose electrikal engines are not being repaired, whose captains are not inexperienced with overflying the Channel, whose crews are not several cups deep into their Christmas celebration. The ferries aren't running; it's Christmas Eve. By the time Alek begins enquiring into hiring a boat, the day is largely gone, and he won't have time to reach London from the coast.

Volger, who has spent the day deriding his efforts (when he hasn't disappeared for decidedly long coffee breaks), stands beside Alek on the pier as the daylight begins to fade.

"This trip was a terrible idea," Alek says softly, staring across the gray chop: Britain is over there. Britain, London, Deryn, _home_. "I know it would have been foolish to refuse Karl's invitation. But – Deryn could have come."

Volger says nothing.

Alek sighs. "And I ought to have brought Bovril."

"Yes," Volger says with more than a touch of scorn. "The new Emperor of Austria-Hungary would have greatly enjoyed a Darwinist creature – or two – running about his court."

The darkening sky, the frustrating day, the sickness in his heart, all combine into a bleakness that leaves Alek hollow and cold. He turns away from the British shore and begins walking. "Well, we most certainly should have left Vienna earlier."

"Difficult to walk out on one's host, when he insists on restoring one's family estates and elevating one's rank."

"I was happy as 'Mr. Hohenberg'," Alek says shortly.

God's wounds; it's the truth. And after three years as a commoner, he shall hardly know what do as Duke Aleksandar. Deryn will tease him mercilessly, he is sure of _that_.

_And don't be late, Dummkopf!_

_Oh? And why not?_

_You won't get to unwrap your gift._

_I'll have to be home early, then._

"If it pleases Your Highness, I took the liberty earlier of making the necessary arrangements," the count says, ignoring Alek's words and oblivious to his inner musings. "There is a hotel room waiting, as well as alternate transportation for the morning."

"Thank you, Count," Alek says, though he hardly means it.

In his mind he imagines firelight, the scent of pine boughs and cinnamon, the soft brush of Deryn's mouth against his.

This may be the worst Christmas yet.

.

.

.

Midnight. Christmas Eve.

Alek leans his forehead against the cold glass of the hotel room window, listening to distant church bells tolling the beginning of Christmas Day. He's still being melodramatic, according to Volger, who has disappeared again.

Perhaps it's the truth. It's such a small thing, after all. Such an inconsequential promise to break, such a ridiculous stroke of bad luck. And yet the ache in Alek's chest isn't small. Or inconsequential. Or ridiculous.

He thinks of the gift he'd found for Deryn in Vienna – a new knife, finely honed, perfectly balanced, and meant for practical use. He'd had her initials engraved on the ricasso.

The last echoing bell-ring fades into the night.

"Happy Christmas, Deryn," he says softly. His breath clouds on the glass, obscuring the nighttime city beyond.

He closes his eyes.

"Oh, good God," Volger says behind him.

Alek starts and straightens up, turning. His fencing tutor is standing in the open door, looking every bit as disdainful as he sounds: "If you're through indulging your misery, Your Highness -?"

"What is it?" Alek says, irritated.

Volger smirks and steps aside without another word.

And Deryn enters the room.

Her airman's clothes are travel-stained, her hair mussed, her eyes exhausted, and she is the most beautiful, impossible, perfect thing Alek has ever seen.

She laughs when he pulls her into a fierce hug, even as she returns the embrace wholeheartedly. "Aye, I missed you too, daftie."

God's wounds, she smells perfect, too. He has to force himself to step back – though he can't bring himself to let go of her hands. "How -?" he says, bewildered and delighted all at once.

She grins. "Dr. Barlow and Volger, how else? Barking plotters. He sent a message this morning, and the lady boffin pulled all sorts of strings to get me on an airbeast and fetch you home."

" 'The necessary arrangements,' " Alek says, glancing over at Volger, who is feigning indifference. "So I see."

"Merry Christmas, Your Highness," Volger says in German, bowing.

"Merry Christmas, Count," Alek says. He lets go of Deryn's hands long enough to give the man a proper bow in return. "And thank you."

Volger harrumphs. "We are leaving at precisely seven o'clock tomorrow morning. Be in the lobby on time. No _dallying_," he orders, then leaves, shutting the door behind him.

Alek turns back to Deryn. Joy is a bright, sharp thing in his chest. He brushes a finger along her jaw, not quite certain she's truly here, and she smiles at him.

"Here - I brought you a gift," she says, reaching into her heavy airman's jacket. "Two, actually."

One of the gifts is Bovril, who chatters happily before taking up its usual position on Alek's shoulder. "Fetch you home. Daftie," it concludes, as Alek scratches behind its ears.

"Aye," Deryn says softly, not looking at Bovril at all. "Home."

She kisses him then. Curls her fingers into his shirtfront and pulls him close and kisses him. Her mouth is warm and she tastes rather strongly of coffee. Not as appropriate as pine boughs and cinnamon, perhaps, but he doesn't care; she is a miracle, and miracles are quite appropriate today.

Something sharp jabs him in the shoulder. He steps back, swearing, and Deryn looks down at her jacket in surprise, then grins.

"That's the other gift," she says, pulling out a sprig of mistletoe from one pocket. She holds it up between them and twirls it between her fingers, leaves and berries spinning, mischief on her face.

"I told you we wouldn't need it," he says, taking it from her and letting it fall to the floor – where it will not cause any further interruptions.

Bovril cackles. Alek and Deryn both ignore it in favor of another, longer, deeper kiss.

"Happy Christmas, Alek," she says against his lips.

And it is.

.

.

.

**Note:** In 1917, Emperor Karl reshuffled the House of Hohenberg, making Prince Maximilian (by then the head of the family) into Duke Maximilian. Karl seems to have been a pretty nice guy where Franz and Sophie's real kids were concerned, so I figured he'd be cool to Alek, too, even with the whole, you know, "I want your job" thing. Mostly - I just wanted a reason to strand Alek on Christmas Eve. :D


	91. sick day

**Note:** ThornyRose, you requested a sickfic, and at long (long, long) last, here it is!

.

.

.

Deryn is ill.

It happens so rarely that Alek was, at first, inclined to believe her protestations that the sniffing and coughing meant nothing. But when he awoke this morning, her skin was pale, her forehead searingly hot, and her eyes dull and glazed.

Of course she'd tried to get up. Of course she'd tried to tell him she was hale and hearty, even as she put one hand on the wall for balance.

"You're ill," he'd said.

"No I'm not, _Dummkopf_," she'd said… then sneezed explosively into the sleeve of her dressing gown.

He'd called for the doctor at once, and spent the time before the man's arrival trying to convince Deryn that she was better off waiting in bed.

Of course she hadn't.

Now he stands impatiently at the foot of the bed, watching as the doctor examines his wife, who is impatiently enduring the pokes and prods and requests to inhale deeply and exhale slowly.

It had been somewhat of a relief, years ago, to learn that Darwinist physicians didn't _always_ use ghastly fabrications. This one, for example, uses the same sort of black bag and stethoscope as his family's physician in Austria.

"Is it influenza?" Alek asks, finally voicing the fear that's gripped him since her first sniffle.

"Barking spiders," Deryn says, scowling. "It isn't sodding influenza."

The doctor finishes his examination and begins packing up his things. "Correct. You'll be pleased to know, Mr. Hohenberg, that your wife is only suffering from a bit of the common cold."

"As _some of us _have suggested already," Alek says, looking at Deryn, and, he's sure, doing a terrible job of hiding his relief.

She sneezes into her handkerchief. Loud and unladylike, and she snuffs and swabs at her nose like an airman when she's done. "Aye, all right, maybe I am."

The doctor closes his black bag with a snap. "The illness should resolve itself within the next few days. Make certain that she rests," he says to Alek. "And she should eat and drink warm things. Nothing too taxing. Soup would be excellent."

"Yes, of course," Alek says. "Thank you, Doctor, for venturing out on such a day."

The doctor shakes hands with him, and Alek escorts him to the door and out into the cold, grey rain of March in London. Then he returns to his ill wife… who is attempting to climb out of bed.

"God's wounds, you may be the worst patient in history," he says. "Lie _down_. It won't kill you; I daresay you'll feel better for it."

"Bollocks," she says, but (after another sneeze), reluctantly settles herself back onto the pillows. Alek helps her tug the covers into place, which earns him a disgruntled glare.

She makes such a show of hating this sort of cosseting, and it's all he can ever do not to smile.

He knows her too well.

"Do you want anything?" he asks.

"Aye, a head that's not aching."

"I'm afraid I haven't any of those," he says, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. "But I might be able to find some tea."

Deryn looks up at him. "Lemon and honey would be brilliant," she says, and sneezes explosively into her handkerchief.

Alek waits until she's done wiping her nose and cursing the sodding wee germs that have infected her. Then he leans over and kisses her hot cheek. "I want you well, _Liebe_."

"I want me well too, daftie," Deryn says, blue eyes too bright and too tired all at once; he'll forgive her the cross tone.

"Next time, perhaps, you'll take my advice and not go flying in a rainstorm."

She closes her eyes, muttering something too low to hear, but that is no doubt very uncomplimentary.

Alek smiles, presses a last kiss to the top of her head, and goes to fix her a cup of tea. He half-expects to see her sneaking out of bed again; the fact that she doesn't make the effort is also worrisome in and of itself.

He carries her the tea and finds that she's piled the blankets on top of her in a great heap, rather like a burrowing animal.

"Thanks, love," she says, sitting up and accepting the cup of tea with another airman's snuffle. He sits beside her on the bed as she drinks it. By the time she finishes, she's shivering and crackling with exhaustion. He tucks her in again and stays another few minutes until he's certain she's asleep.

He watches her. And worries.

The doctor said it was only a cold. And surely, very soon, she'll be well. After every mad, valiant, amazing thing she's done, a few germs are not going to be the death of her.

He worries, all the same.

Alek eventually leaves her sleeping, quietly pulls the door almost shut (in case she needs something and calls for him), and finds himself standing alone in the hallway, utterly at loose ends.

He hasn't anything urgent to do today, for once, but he cannot spend the day fretting over his ill wife. For one thing, she would kill him. For another, what does it say about him, that he sits motionless without her to guide his orbit?

_That she's had the mastery of me since we met,_ he thinks, with a rueful chuckle. He glances at the door to their bedroom.

There are worse destinies.

In the end, he sits at his desk in the study and reads over papers sent from the Zoological Society, then composes replies to the ones that seem most important. This occupies a few hours of his time, but not nearly enough of his attention.

He checks on Deryn. She's asleep and snoring loudly.

Alek makes himself some tea and drinks about half of it. He spends several minutes absently swirling the remnants in the cup. They were supposed to go shopping today, for groceries, but he supposes they can manage for another few days.

He checks on Deryn. She's still asleep, having now taken over the entire bed and sprawling out in a decidedly unladylike fashion.

He prepares lunch and eats it at his desk, feeling absurdly alone. God's wounds, she's just down the hall; he hasn't been abandoned.

He sighs, leaves his dishes where they are, and goes to check on Deryn.

Perhaps not surprisingly, she's still asleep and still sprawled out. Also not surprisingly, she has kicked the blankets and sheets entirely off. Her feet, when he touches them, are like ice.

He tugs the bedclothes back into place and feels her forehead. Cool, thank God. It seems her fever has broken already. She's always been a quick one to heal.

When she can hold still, that is.

His fierce, fearless midshipman, occasionally too daring for her own good. He kisses her forehead where he touched it, silently wishing her pleasant dreams.

Of course she stirs and mumbles something he doesn't catch, then blinks her eyes open. "Alek?"

"Your fever's gone," he says softly, sitting beside her on the bed. He's sorry to have woken her, but suspects she won't be awake for long at all.

"Mm," she says, closing her eyes. She sniffs and clears her throat, though her voice sounds unusually thick. "Head still aches."

"Because you're still ill. Do you want more tea?"

"Mm," she says again, falling back to sleep already. He debates leaving her in peace, then reasons that he hasn't anything more pressing to attend to.

Accordingly, he removes his shoes and climbs into the bed, slipping beneath the sheets and gathering her close. "I don't like it when you're ill," he says into her hair.

"Me neither," she mumbles. "S' awful."

He strokes her back, gently, until he's certain she's asleep again. Then he means to get up – he really does – but if he moves he might disturb her, and she _does_ need rest…

In the end he stays where he is, and, lulled by the familiar warmth of his best friend, a night spent worrying about her health, and a cozy dark room, dozes off himself.

It's a shallow sleep, and only lasts an hour or so. When he wakes, he finds his wife out of bed and across the room, wearing a dressing gown over her pyjamas, one hand on the doorknob, and busily sneezing into a handkerchief.

"What are you doing?" he demands, sitting up and raking a hand through his hair, which he can tell by feel is rather mussed.

"Escaping," she says. Sneezes. Swipes at her nose with the handkerchief and sniffs. "What's it look like, ninny?"

"God's wounds," he says, already out of the bed and halfway to her. She makes a token effort to open the door, but he puts his hand on the edge and forces it shut again. "You _are_ impossible."

"Aye, and I'm sodding hungry," she says. She prods a finger into his chest, just under his collarbone. "I want food. Not soup, mind. _Food_."

"We'll see, _Liebe_." He fishes a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and gives it over.

"Don't _'Liebe'_ me, Clanker," she says, blowing her nose. Her eyes are dancing with some of their usual spark, he's cheered to see. "I can always find myself a new ex-prince."

"I will not be threatened by a godless Darwinist," he says.

"What if a former midshipman threatens you?"

He pretends to think this over. "No. A Hapsburg, even a fallen one, is not intimidated by a common soldier."

She grabs his shirtsleeve and pulls him closer, so that they are face to face, noses nearly touching. Hers is rather on the red side. "How about your barking brilliant wife?"

"Absolutely," he says, without hesitation.

"Too right. I'm going to kiss you," she announces. She releases his shirt and turns her head to sneeze again. "When I'm not stuffed full of germs, that is."

"You'll do more than kiss me, I assure you," he says, smirking, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and letting his hand linger. As absurd as this conversation is, he's delighted that she's well enough to tease him.

She swats his hand away and swabs at her nose, snuffling loudly. "Promises won't fill me up. Are you going to feed me or not?"

"There isn't much," he says, sidestepping the question. "We didn't have a chance to go to the market today."

Now it's her turn to smirk. "You just sat around and moped all day, didn't you?"

He frowns. "I wouldn't call it moping."

She laughs at him. Sneezes into her handkerchief. "Come on, _Dummkopf_," she says, opening the door and making her escape into the hall.

Alek stays where he is a moment, a smile tugging at his mouth. Then he follows his wife to the kitchen.

And halfway there, he sneezes.


	92. wrapped around your finger

Deryn hasn't a stitch of clothing on, unless you count the ring. Alek's fiddling with it, turning her hand this way and that, watching the gold spark in the light from the bedside lamp. He hasn't a stitch on either, which she feels is considerably more interesting than a loop of metal, but Clankers will be Clankers.

"I know it's not the custom…" he begins to say.

She cuts him off with a snort. "Aye, we're very traditional."

He grins and gives the ring a little twist on her finger. It had been cold when he first slipped it on, but it's as warm as she is now. Like a lizard, matching the temperature of its surroundings.

Still feels barking odd, though. And she'll have to take it off to do any real work.

Alek hadn't minded when she'd pointed that out, but now, thinking on it, she gets a pang. She'll string it on a chain, then, wear it around her neck.

Keep it close to her heart.

"Perhaps I should wear one, too," he finishes. He takes her left hand and presses it over the back of his, fingers spread. The ridge of metal digs into her skin - not unpleasantly.

"Fancy some new jewelry, Mr. Hohenberg?" she says, teasing him, pulling her hand free.

"Not at all." He comes up on one elbow, so that he's leaning over her where she's lying, flat on her back. His eyes are very dark and his voice gives her a bit of a shiver: "I fancy everyone knowing of your claim on me."

She can't argue that. So she kisses him.

And after a long while, they get back to the ring. Now her hand's resting on his side, ring winking in the light as he breathes in and out, slow and deep.

"Yes," he says, fighting a yawn. "I'll want one."

"It _is_ lovely," she says, warm, half-asleep, half-aglow.

He makes a vague noise of agreement, then says, drowsy, "I was glad to put the last of it to good use."

Suddenly she's wide awake again, staring at him, remembering a gold bar whittled down…

"_Alek_," she says, sitting up. "You daft... You're winding me up. You didn't _actually_."

He opens his eyes and gives her a smile; old ghosts dance beneath it.

"There was just enough," he says.

.

.

.

**Note:** Men's wedding rings weren't common until the 1940s.


	93. hypothetical

"Papa," Sophie says, flopping upside-down over the back of his armchair, "if you were king for a day, what would you do?"

Alek closes his book. Thinks a moment.

"I'd marry your mother," he says.

Sophie rolls her eyes. Sighs heavily. "You already _did_ that."

"Hmm. She couldn't be my queen? Or you my princess?"

"_No_," she says, impatient. "It's _pretend_!"

"Then I'm afraid I'd have to throw my crown into the sea and come home."

Sophie slides off the chair with another sigh, this one disgusted. "You're terrible at this, Papa."

Alek picks up his book again, and smiles.


	94. lost and found

**Note:** The original request from V musicka: _Suppose Deryn and Alek and the Leviathan crew __have landed somewhere in the East (Japan, etc.) and Alek, before the story __began, found out that "Dylan" was a girl. He's avoiding her, is kind of __grumpy, and is still getting over the fact when he's surrounded and attacked __by some unfriendly locals. Deryn rushes in and saves him with her awesomeness __(wit, knife-throwing, etc.) and... whatever you like._

.

.

.

_Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.  
_

_- Henry David Thoreau_

.

.

.

In hindsight, ducking his guards on the streets of Tokyo is probably not the most clever thing Alek has ever done.

To be fair, he wasn't trying to provoke an uproar on the part of the British, and he certainly wasn't trying to isolate himself so that he would be an easy target for assassins. He was trying to get away from Deryn.

_A girl_. A deceitful, unnatural girl. He thought he'd found a friend, but it was entirely a lie. Her apologies, her excuses – it all means nothing. He never wants to see her or listen to her lies again.

So he ducks his guards, of which Deryn is one, and quickly, effortlessly, manages to get himself lost beyond all belief.

It takes quite a few minutes to find his way back to a main thoroughfare, and then a few minutes more to decide that he does, in fact, want to ask for directions.

He's angry, but not suicidal. He'll need to get back to the _Leviathan_ and his men eventually.

He just… doesn't want it to be anytime very soon.

If Bovril were along for this excursion, retracing his steps would undoubtedly be somewhat easier, but he – of course – left the loris in his stateroom. Eventually Alek comes across a merchant who speaks enough German to explain the location of the airfield. He begins working his way in that direction, being sure to stay away from the less reputable-looking areas.

Tokyo is fascinating: a city in transition. Clanker to Darwinist, Oriental to European, all of it overlapping comfortably, it seems. He watches Japanese boffins in suits and bowler hats walk past women in high wooden sandals and stiff silk robes… and wonders.

How different is this city from his own circumstances? He, too, is in transition – no longer quite a Clanker, but not a true Darwinist, either. No longer a prince, and not an emperor.

Missing his friend. Not ready to apologize.

Yet.

He sighs. It was all so much _easier_ when she was a boy. God's wounds, he can't even make a friend correctly! And now, his admiration for "Dylan" takes on new overtones that he isn't entirely certain that he likes.

He imagines Bovril's voice murmuring "_In transition_" into his ear and feels abruptly irritated with himself.

All of his musings, however, are cut short when a voice behind him shouts, "Hohenberg!"

He turns, startled, at the sound of his name. Belatedly, he realizes that the accent was Japanese, not Scottish, and that Deryn's voice was never that harsh.

Belatedly, he realizes he's just given himself away.

Four men quickly surround him. They're dressed in the Western style, though they're clearly locals. Two of them grab his arms, holding him in place, and one stands behind him. Something cold and hard digs into his back, making him go still.

The leader – or the man Alek presumes to be the leader, anyway – grabs his chin in one hand, roughly forcing him to turn his head this way and that. Alek jerks his head away. He expects retribution, but the men only seem amused.

The men have a brief exchange in Japanese, and then the leader says, in very good German, "You are the prince. The Austrian."

Alek's heart is hammering, but he says, "You have the wrong person, I'm afraid," with creditable calm. He looks around, hoping for an ally, hoping for a rescue, but everyone in the street seems to have become suddenly and selectively blind, deaf, and dumb.

The leader gives him a flicker of a smile. "No, Your Highness. I think we are right." He gestures sharply.

One of the other men holds up a torn, grimy square of newsprint. Alek catches a glimpse of his own photograph and feels his hopes sink.

Eddie Malone and the _New York World_ are moments away from getting him killed.

"I don't know what you have been promised," he says quickly, "but I can match the offer -"

He cuts himself off because the leader's cruel smirk promises no mercy.

"You will walk with us, Your Highness," the leader says, adjusting the knot of his tie, then smoothing the silk flat. His clothes are of the highest quality, but colorful tattoos are revealed beneath the finely-tailored cuffs. "Murder in the street is so barbaric."

Another jab from the object in his back; he suspects it's a pistol. Instead of being cowed, Alek is furious.

After escaping Austria, after leading a revolution in Istanbul, with his destiny laid out before him, he will _not_ go meekly to the slaughter, and how dare these criminals assume that he will?

"No," he says, lifting his chin to glare at the leader. As far as final words go, it's hardly up to imperial standards. He finds he doesn't care.

The leader doesn't look away; his smirk hardens into something cold and glittering. Eyes still on Alek, he says a few quick, pleasant words in Japanese.

Things happen rather quickly, then.

The men holding onto his arms shift their grips slightly. The pressure at his back eases for a moment. Instinct takes over, and Alek is twisting his arms free and pushing forward before anyone – least of all himself – realizes what he's doing.

He slams into the leader, knocking the man backwards and sending his hat tumbling into the street. Alek nearly falls, but regains his balance and –

- is caught by grasping hands and finds himself facing the barrel of a pistol and -

- there is a piercing whistle from farther down the street and a knife sprouts from the shoulder of the man with the gun -

A rigging knife. A midshipman's whistle.

And British voices are shouting, and fabricated hounds are baying and barking, and the four would-be assassins do their best to disappear as airmen and Japanese officers close in.

Alek, however, stands where he is, because running towards him – sweating, dirty, swearing, beautiful – is his best friend. Right now, as the realization of what nearly happened sets in and turns his knees to water, all he cares to do is wait for Deryn to reach him.

When she does, she hesitates barely a moment, and then she pulls him into a fierce, rough hug.

"You _Dummkopf_," Deryn says. She's pressed closely enough that he can feel the vibration of her words in his chest and smell the sweat that she's raised searching for him.

What a fool he was to run from her.

"I'm sorry," he says softly, tightening his hold around her shoulders. Sorry for running, sorry for his anger, sorry for nearly dying in a Tokyo street for no reason other than misplaced Hapsburg pride.

It doesn't matter that she's a girl, he discovers. It never mattered.

"Me too," she answers, just as quiet. Then, louder: "But you're still pure dead stupid for running off like that."

He gives her a crooked smile as they separate. "So I've realized."

"The whole barking city's looking for you. Volger's foaming at the mouth, practically," she says. She looks at him closely, and he feels his ears heating under the scrutiny. "Did those bastards hurt you?"

"No," he says, though he suspects he'll have a bruise or two later. "You rescued me just in time."

"Aye, I did, didn't I?" she says, quite satisfied. She tosses a scowl in the direction of the departed men. "Lost my best sodding knife, though."

A small commotion further up the street is revealed to be some of the _Leviathan_'s crew victoriously dragging one of the would-be assassins back. It's the man who'd held the pistol on Alek, and who'd been at the receiving end of Deryn's excellent aim. His suit is stained heavily with red around the shoulder and arm.

"Perhaps not," Alek says.

Deryn grins at him, then jogs over to the airmen and retrieves her knife amid much congratulatory back-slapping. Alek watches her, a curious new tightness in his chest.

"Come on, you daft prince," she says, rejoining him. She wipes off the blade and sticks it into her boot again. "Let's get ourselves home."

"Yes," he says. "I believe I'm ready to be scolded by Volger - and Bovril."

She laughs.

Alek walks with Deryn back to the airship, and, along the way, finds himself no longer in transition.


	95. charity begins at home

"In _your house_?"

Dr. Barlow stops the smirk before her mouth can do more than twitch slightly. Deryn Sharp fails to notice her amusement, being preoccupied instead with gaping in a most unladylike manner.

"Unless you have a situation already arranged," Dr. Barlow says, pulling on her cleanest pair of gloves. She doesn't mind traveling, but she _is_ looking forward to the comforts of civilization, including reliable laundering.

The girl blinks. "Well – no, ma'am. I stayed with my brother before, but he's on the _Minotaur_ now."

Dr. Barlow is not surprised to hear this. She adjusts her bowler hat and finds herself wishing for a proper mirror. Silly of her, to be so aflutter about the prospect of seeing Alan and her children again – but there it is. "Then you shall stay with us until something suitable can be found."

"But…" The midshipman trails off, glancing behind her – no doubt looking for the prince and the count. Indeed, Dr. Barlow is likewise wondering why those two are so delayed. The _Leviathan_ is due to arrive in London within the hour, and the four of them will be leaving together. Dr. Barlow was quite clear with Count Volger, this morning, about her desire to meet and discuss the final details.

Deryn looks back around again, repeating (somewhat helplessly): "In your _own house_?"

Dr. Barlow quirks an eyebrow up. "We have more than sufficient space, I assure you. If none of the guest rooms suit you, I shall be perfectly happy to place you in the servants' quarters."

The girl recovers, unable to hide her own smirk. "Aye – I mean, no, ma'am. A guest room will be more than fine, I reckon."

"Excellent," Dr. Barlow says. She straightens her skirt and looks to the cabin door just as it is darkened by Count Volger and Prince Aleksandar. "Ah, Your Highness. Count. So good of you to finally join us."

"We were seeing to our own matters," Volger says.

"Indeed," Dr. Barlow says, drily. She gestures at Deryn. "We have been discussing living arrangements."

"Alek and I could let a flat together," Deryn says unexpectedly, causing the boy in question to sputter and turn a rather florid shade of red even as she grins in mischief.

Volger's eyes narrow, but he makes no reply.

Dr. Barlow has a moment of amused pity for the count. As long as the children mind themselves in public (and in private, to the extent that Mr. Sharp does not suddenly have to explain away a large abdomen), she has no concerns about what they get up to.

She's a mother, yes, but she's not _their_ mother. And as a fabricator, she can hardly decry what amounts to the _raison d'être_ of biology.

But Volger has no such luxury. He is Alek's guardian, and more than that, he is beholden to his late friend's wishes. Dr. Barlow has not been made privy to all of those, but one can reasonably assume that early fatherhood is not on the list.

Time is short, so Dr. Barlow elects not to notice the undercurrents swirling about the room. Instead she moves on: "Of course Aleksandar will eventually wish to establish his own household –"

"Of course," Volger says, pointedly not looking at Miss Sharp.

Deryn continues to grin, unabashed. Dr. Barlow admires the girl's pluck, if not her cheek.

"- but it seems only logical that the three of you should be my guests until such time as these details can be settled," she concludes.

There is a small pause during which many things are not said. Dr. Barlow watches the Austrians exchange a glance, and then Alek coughs politely and says, "Thank you, Doctor. That is quite generous. We accept."

"Indeed," Volger says. "Quite generous."

She elects not to notice _that_ undercurrent, either.

"Just like that?" Deryn asks, surprised. "I thought you'd at least kick up a bit of a fuss about it."

"Well, I _am_ a pauper now," the prince says lightly, smiling at her. "I must depend on the charity of others."

Volger clears his throat. "You are forgetting something, Your Highness."

Alek looks up at the count, frowning slightly. "What is that?"

"I may have misdirected you earlier, when I implied that you were penniless."

Alek's frown deepens. "But my father's gold is gone... or very nearly. And I have no way to inherit from him without the pope's letter."

"You cannot now inherit from your _father_, true," Volger says, "but you are still your _mother's_ heir. And the Archduke took precautions there as well. The estates at Konopischt and Artstetten are yours – as is a not inconsiderable fortune."

Silence greets that pronouncement. Dr. Barlow was well aware of the facts – indeed, she and the count had discussed this only days before, while _Leviathan_ was still in New York – but it seems the children were not. They look stunned.

Most amusing.

"Just like that," her loris says, then cackles.

"The charity of others," the loris on Alek's shoulder says in apparent agreement.

"Oh," the prince says faintly. "Yes. Of course. So I… I'm not a pauper?"

"No more than you ever were." Volger straightens his already straight cuffs. "Of course, it will be difficult to access that fortune at present, considering that we are both _persona non grata_ to the Empire."

"Once the war ends, I should think," Dr. Barlow says. She's enjoying this immensely. And she'll be able to tell Alan all about it (and the rest of her adventures) in a few short hours.

Truly, this has been an excellent morning.

"Blisters," Deryn says. She turns to Alek, astonishment already giving way again to mischief. "In that case, your princeliness – d'you think you could buy me a balloon?"

"Yes," he says, ears red but face and voice perfectly composed. "We can put it in our flat."


	96. stories to tell

Max leans back in his chair and plays with his glass, nudging it back and forth on the tablecloth as the story continues. He's heard the tales of his parents' exploits all his life, of course, but they still bring a smile to his face – especially the way Ernst's girlfriend gasps in all the appropriate places.

"Is that _true_?" she asks at the end. Eyes wide and shining, leaning forward in fascination.

"Aye, every word," Mama says, concluding her account by tossing back the last of her drink in one gulp. She looks satisfied; she appreciates a good audience.

"Approximately," Papa adds. He's smiling at Mama – the small, private smile they share that always makes Max feel as though all's right with the world.

Vera clutches Ernst's arm. "How amazing!" she gushes. "I had no idea! Oh, it's better than going to the cinema!"

"A fair bit cheaper, too," Max says to Ernst, and is rewarded with a scowl and a kick to the shins beneath the table. He grins at his little brother and lifts his glass in a half-mocking salute.

"Mind you," Papa says to Vera, "at the time, it was more terrifying than exciting. Would you like something else to drink -?"

Vera declines, and the conversation turns to what Ernst and Vera are studying at Cambridge. But the girl's excitement has started the wheels turning in Max's mind, and when Mama rises to go to the kitchen, he follows her.

"What do you think?" he asks, leaning against the doorframe, glass in hand. His mother's movements are quick, deft, graceful without trying. When he was a boy he considered her the most wonderful woman in the universe – and time has not much revised his opinion.

In the dining room, everyone breaks into laughter.

Mama rinses out her glass and sets it aside. "She's a nice enough lass. He could do worse, that's for bloody sure."

"I meant –" He pushes off from the doorframe and comes closer. Mama holds out her hand and he gives over his own empty glass for cleaning. "Your stories. Have you ever thought of writing them down? Turning them into a film, or a book?"

She gives him a look, then shakes her head and laughs. "Your da would rather toss _himself_ off of an airship. All that attention? No, love, we haven't."

"What if I wrote it?" he asks in a rush, almost before she's finished speaking.

He finds himself holding his breath. For an idea less than five minutes old, he's absurdly attached to it.

And he's perfect for it. He's a writer, he knows the subject matter… he may be a touch biased, true. But he could do it. It's a story worth telling; they are people worth celebrating.

He wants to share his parents' mad, amazing stories with the world.

He just can't believe it took _Ernst's girlfriend_ to make him realize it.

Mama stops drying her hands and stares at him again. "Aye, that might be different," she says slowly, thoughtfully. "I know you'd do it properly. But you'd have to ask him. It's his story too."

"Of course," Max says, heart dropping. Papa thinks his poetry is brilliant, but Papa also thinks his day job as a reporter for _The Times_ is rubbish. (It _is_ rubbish, though not for the reasons Papa gives.) He grimaces and crosses his arms over his chest. "Never mind, then."

Mama clucks, ruffles his hair as though he's still five years old, and drops a kiss on his cheek. "Don't quit before you've started. He loves you… which is more than any other reporter can say. Quite right, too; those bum-rags."

He leans away from her and finger-combs his hair into order again. "Maybe if I used a _nom de plume_? Or changed your names. Or both."

"Or wait until we die," she says, cheery. She fetches two clean glasses from the cupboard. "He can't fuss about it then."

"_Mama_," he says, and she laughs again. Both of his parents are in excellent health; Max sometimes suspects that they'll outlive him.

"He might need to have a think on it, but _ask him_." She goes over to the other cupboard, where the brandy's kept, and removes a bottle. "Just wait until Ernst and his lassie are gone, aye?"

"Right," Max says, as more laughter echoes from the dining room. "The fewer witnesses the better, I suppose."

"Don't be so barking gloomy, love, you sound like your _Großonkel_ Volger." Mama starts towards the kitchen door, bottle of brandy and two glasses in hand.

He trails after her. "Mama?" he asks, meaning the brandy.

She glances at it. "Oh. Well," she says, practical as ever, "a round of drinks can't hurt your chances."


	97. armistice

**Note:** Sir Thomas Barlow (Nora Barlow's father-in-law) owned a country estate outside Wendover, Buckinghamshire, called Boswells. Additionally, Alan Barlow wasn't knighted until 1918, and did not inherit the baronetcy until Sir Thomas died in 1945 (at a mere 99 years old!). Therefore, in 1915, Alan would have still been plain Mr. Barlow.

.

.

.

_"There never was a good war, or a bad peace."_

_- Benjamin Franklin_

.

.

.

"I can't believe it's over," Alek says.

Deryn gives a sleepy _hmm_. She's happy too that those German bum-rags have decided to admit – six months after it became obvious to everyone – that they've lost the war. But right now she's full of warm sunlight and country scents and the sound the wind makes as it runs through the trees, and she wants to take a nap, not talk about war.

Alek sighs. "I thought – I suppose I thought that it would never end."

"Everything ends," she says a bit crossly, yawning. She opens her eyes and turns her head so she can see him. He's lying in the grass beside her, frowning up at the sky, hands folded on his chest, a snoozing Bovril flopped across his stomach. "My nap, for example."

"Sorry," he says, though he's not sorry enough to stop talking: "It just seems like such a _waste_. Nearly a year of fighting, and for what? Germany wanted the war so badly, and it's ruined them."

That's true enough. Germany is crumbling fast, and it won't be an empire after the peace treaty is signed. It won't be much of anything, if Dr. Barlow's husband is right. Mr. Barlow, who works for Parliament, joined them all here at Boswells last week. He mentioned straightaway that the rest of Europe will be coming to the peace table with their carving knives sharpened. Kaiser Wilhelm will be lucky to keep his britches.

So Alek's right to say that those German sods haven't benefitted. But something in his tone makes Deryn wake a bit further, and she rolls up on one elbow, squinting down at him. "Blisters. Would you rather the war went on for ages?"

"Of course not." He looks up at her. His eyes are greener than any stretch of Buckinghamshire grass, but filled with sad ghosts. "It's only… my parents truly died for nothing."

"Alek," she says softly.

The breeze picks up, bending the grass, ruffling his hair, tugging at the open collar of his shirt. It does nothing to chase away his sadness.

"It wasn't for nothing," she says, her voice barely a whisper.

He closes his eyes and looks so suddenly _tired_ that she wonders if she shouldn't do something drastic. "What was it for, then?" he asks, voice dull.

"Bovril," she says, grabbing for the first thing that pops into her attic.

Alek's eyes fly open. "_Bovril_?"

Bovril chuckles in its sleep, but doesn't wake.

Deryn reaches out her free hand and takes one of his. "Aye, and me."

He stares at her a bit longer, and then his fingers tighten around hers and the sadness fades from his eyes. "_Und du_," he agrees. "Especially you."

It seems the moment for it, so she ducks down and kisses him. Despite the drowsy summer heat, a shiver runs through her when he runs his hand up her arm and along her neck. She bites lightly on his lip and pulls away.

"Come here," he says in German, voice catching, drawing her back down. She hasn't anything better to do than kiss him again, so she obliges. The war's over, after all; they might as well celebrate. And she can think of worse ways to celebrate than by trading slow, lazy kisses under a blue summer sky.

It's lovely. It would be even lovelier if they were aloft, of course – but she'll work with what she has.

After a minute one of them bumps into Bovril, who wakes up with an indignant, "Barking spiders! How rude!"

Alek chuckles and Deryn laughs outright at the beastie. It sniffs, wee snout held high, and climbs down from Alek's stomach to curl up on the grass.

She takes advantage of the loris's absence to rearrange herself, laying her own head on Alek's chest, just below the hard line of his ribs. His fingers find her hair and stroke through it, gently.

"I wish your parents could come down that road right now to fetch you home," she says, turning her head to look in the direction of the long, tree-lined drive that leads to Wendover. She swallows and adds, "I wish my da could be with them."

"I wish that too," he says quietly. The words vibrate through his stomach; she feels it in her skull.

"But if it's destiny, it all had to happen," she says, nudging him a bit with her shoulder. "Even the pure dead awful bits."

"You're right, of course," he says, still playing with her hair. His smile is audible. "Please continue to remind me."

"Aye, and I sodding will," she says. She yawns and closes her eyes on the sky and its great scudding clouds. Alek makes a terrible pillow, truth be told, but she wouldn't move just now for anything. "Right after my nap."

Unseen, Bovril _hmphs_. Alek chuckles again, then falls silent. Between the warmth of him, the warmth of the sun, and the steady drone of insects, it's not long before she's sliding into sleep again.

"Deryn?" he ventures. The word rumbles straight through to her brain and jolts her awake again.

She turns her face towards his and glares – both in annoyance and because the sun is barking bright. "Blisters, _what_?"

"The French government has invited me to witness the treaty signing," he says, as if he's confessing a sin. "Mr. Barlow brought the letter."

So much for sleeping. She sits up, rests her arms atop her knees, and looks at him. "D'you mean to go?"

He pushes himself up on his elbows. There's a piece of grass in his hair, she notices. "Only if you come with me."

"_Dummkopf_," she says. She reaches over and plucks the grass free, tossing it into the breeze. "I would anyway."

His mouth quirks up into a mischievous half-smile. "You may have to wear a dress."

"Lad in a dress," Bovril says, then cackles.

Deryn gives the beastie an unamused glare. It cackles again, then uncurls, stretches out, and rolls over onto its back. She's not going to scratch its sodding belly, she decides, no matter how adorable it is. She deliberately looks back at Alek instead. "What sort of dress?"

Alek laces his hands behind his head and lies down again. "Several, I would think. Quite possibly a ballgown."

Blisters, he doesn't have to sound so _pleased_ about it.

Deryn allows herself one more jaw-cracking yawn, and then, before Alek can suspect a thing, swings a leg over so that she's sitting on his stomach.

He gives a surprised _oof_ as her weight hits him. "Deryn –?"

She bends down and brushes her nose against his. "I'll have to sleep on it," she says, "but I reckon my answer's yes."

And then she kisses him.


	98. memento

The wind pushes hard against him, and Alek grips his coat more tightly closed with the hand not on his cane. It's colder than he remembers.

He steps to the railing and looks out across the city, trying to find something familiar.

"Everything's changed," he says, torn between wonder and dismay.

His granddaughter lays a hand on his arm, and he looks at her. "It's been almost sixty years," she says gently.

"Yes, I know," he says. Everything changes – oh, God, everything changes.

But he needed this to be the same.

He rests his hand on the railing and closes his eyes. Lets the wind rake its stiff, cold fingers over him. The memory is still there, luminous and real, even if the landmarks are not.

_"We save each other." Soft lips pressed to his._

Suddenly he is shaking – not from the cold. Alek opens his eyes and blinks, trying to dispel the tears, trying to pretend that the pain in his chest is only because he's had to climb stairs today.

His granddaughter touches his arm again, concerned. "Grandda?"

Sunlight glints on the river where it joins the harbor, and if he lets his glasses slip just far enough, he can imagine that he sees a great, living airship anchored there.

_Happy anniversary, Liebe_, he thinks. Surely she will hear him; he is atop the tallest building in the world. The closest he can get to heaven without leaving the ground – and Deryn wouldn't want him in an aeroplane. She never liked the things.

_I miss you._

If it's a prayer, it's a paltry one… and yet he hasn't any more to say. He was never very good at princely speeches.

"Grandda, maybe we ought to go back in?"

_I miss you._

The wind abruptly gusts up, grabbing hats and tossing scarves, and for a moment he thinks he hears a woman's laugh.

He takes a breath. Blinks hard, several times.

"I'm ready," he says, turning away from the phantoms of New York harbor, one hand still on the observation deck's safety railing. "I'm ready."

His granddaughter takes his arm, and he lets her lead him inside.


	99. bind off

**Note:** I had some problems with the Mexico reveal scene; there were elements, it seemed to me, that didn't really make sense in the context of the series. Such as: Alek knew an awful lot about Deryn's bindings – especially for a boy who couldn't bring himself to say the word "chest" later on. And the first two books are very specific about her "careful tailoring" and don't mention any binding at all. You could argue that she was doing it the whole time and simply never informed the reader, but as uncomfortable as that sort of thing is, I'd suspect she'd bring it up once or twice.

Have I thought about this too much? Yes. Yes I have. But I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labor. :P

P.S. - "Bind off" is a knitting term. Knitting FTW!

.

.

.

Deryn's shoveling in the last bite of her breakfast when Alek turns up in the middies' mess, loris on his shoulder and bandage on his forehead.

Straightaway, the whole day brightens. As bad as he looked yesterday, when she'd popped into his stateroom to say hello and be glared at by Count Volger, she didn't reckon on Alek being up and about until at least tomorrow.

She swallows and says, "Morning, your princeliness," with a grin.

"Good morning, Mr. Sharp," Alek says, very civil. "And to you as well, Mr. Newkirk."

Newkirk has his mouth full of food, and unlike her, doesn't seem inclined to swallow it down in a gulp. He gives Alek a nod and mumbles something like _Mmphumphmmph_. Friendly enough.

"You look…" Deryn starts, meaning to compliment Alek on his return to good health. Then she makes a proper examination of him: pale, sweating a bit, with a glaze to his eyes as he looks back at her. "…less like a drowned cat."

"Thank you," he says. He crosses the room, moving like there's a glass of water balanced on his head that he doesn't care to spill, and sits – carefully – at the table with them. The ship's matched the storm again, so there's hardly any buffeting. Still, he has to be feeling every tip and bump. "That's approximately how I feel."

"Good morning, _Mr_. Sharp," Bovril says. It stretches its wee arms towards her; Deryn obligingly leans across the table (making Newkirk grab for his plate and go _Mmph!_ in protest) and gathers the beastie up. Bovril clambers up to wrap around her neck, where it nestles warm and light against her skin.

"Well, now that you've dragged your bum out of bed," she says to Alek, "I've a job for us."

"No antennas involved, I hope," he says, dry. One hand reaches up, in reflex, to touch his bandage. He winces.

"Not a one," Deryn says. Mindful of Newkirk sitting inches away, she waits until she catches Alek's eyes to add, "Maybe a secret or two, though."

Understanding lights his dark green eyes. He glances at Newkirk, who's still busily chewing, then looks back at her and nods slightly.

A secret or two – but none between them. Not anymore.

Blisters, what a daft thing to promise.

For that matter, kissing him had been _truly_ daft… and now's not the time to be remembering how his lips felt, is it?

She drops her eyes to her empty breakfast plate just as Newkirk finally finishes his great mouthful, rises, and says: "I'm off, then, Mr. Sharp. You'll be, er, on the boffin's business -?"

"Aye," she agrees. Lying through her teeth. "I'll catch you up quick as I can, but it may be a while."

Newkirk nods once more, mumbles an awkward goodbye to Alek, and hurries out.

Deryn turns back to Alek. Casual as she can manage, she asks, "D'you want something to eat?"

He shakes his head, then winces again, goes whiter yet, and holds very still. "Perhaps just some tea."

She fetches him a cup, but only because he's in no shape to do so himself. Not because she needs a reason to move away from him and pull her thoughts out of mooning girlishness. There's nothing that can come of kissing him, after all, and they both know that.

She hopes he doesn't bring it up. Maybe it can be – well, not a secret, seeing as they don't have any – but something they both know and never mention. Aye. That'd be grand.

He drinks the tea in tiny sips. Cautiously. Like an old man.

"How's your head?" she asks after a minute.

He grimaces. "Aching," he says, setting down the half-empty teacup. "But I shall go mad if I spend another minute in that bed. What sort of secret? Or perhaps I should say _whose_?"

"Mine," she says quietly. "I could use your help, I think."

"Of course," he says. "What do you need me to do? I'm afraid I'm not going to be of much use on one of your madcap adventures..."

There's a smile under those words, and it causes an odd flutter in her stomach. Not because of the kissing (not _only_ because of the kissing, anyway), but because he's sitting there with a sodding head wound, ready to help her however he can.

She doesn't let any of that show, however. It's downright unsoldierly.

"I need you to stand watch while I sneak into sickbay and steal some bandages," she says. "Are you done with that tea?"

"Yes," he says, nudging the cup in her direction. "But, Deryn – why in the world do you need bandages?"

Deryn plucks his cup of tea off the table and swallows the rest in one gulp. _No secrets_.

"To bind my chest," she says.

Alek instantly colors scarlet. "Oh," he says faintly.

"_Chest_," Bovril says, stretching and rolling the word in its gleeful way.

For a moment she thinks Alek might get up and leave, but her Clanker pulls himself together, blows out a breath, stares very hard at the floor and asks, with hardly a cringe, "Aren't you already… taking that, um, precaution?"

She rolls her eyes. "No. Though I _did_ try it, before I left London. Took forever, was barking uncomfortable, and Jaspert said he couldn't tell the difference. So I reckoned I'd do without."

"Madcap adventures," Bovril says.

Deryn cuts the beastie a dark glare, but it's tucked its head back behind her ear, and she can't see it properly. She twitches her shoulders in irritation; the loris digs its little claws into her jacket and refuses to be dislodged.

Alek swallows. The tide of red is receding from his face, but not much. "I see. And what – what's changed your mind?"

"Well, Volger found me out," she says, playing with the handle of the teacup. Her ears feel hot. Sod it all, now _she's_ embarrassed because _he_ is! "And I think the lady boffin has too. Maybe a bit of clever tailoring isn't enough, aye?"

"Um. Perhaps not." He finally looks at her, and ends up staring for a long moment. The daft glaze is back in his eyes, and she wonders what it is, exactly, that he's seeing. She wonders if he's going to forget that she's a girl. Barking spiders, she hopes not. _That's_ a conversation she could do without repeating… though another chance to kiss him wouldn't be so horrible.

"Alek?" she prompts. "Are you all right?"

His expression clears suddenly. "I'm fine, Deryn," he says, pushing back his chair and rising (unsteadily) to his feet. "I assume we're going to do this now?"

"Aye," she says, hopping to her own feet. "Dr. Busk'll be on the bridge for a while yet, and no one else's supposed to be in sickbay."

.

.

Stealing the bandages is pure dead easy – much easier than she expected. She doesn't even have to hide under a mad boffin's bed this time: just slips in, does a quick bit of rummaging, stuffs two rolls into her pockets, and slips back out.

Alek raises his eyebrows with a surprised, "That was all?" when she rejoins him and Bovril in the hallway.

"I could go back in," she offers, grinning, as they head to his stateroom, "and stay there until an officer wanders past and demands to know what you're about."

He smiles. "No, thank you. I don't think I'm recovered enough to tell a good lie."

She snorts. "If you ever could."

"True enough," he says, rueful. "Well. I'm glad I was able to help you, nonetheless."

They reach his cabin and come to a halt in front of his door. She hasn't got any longer for skylarking; Mr. Rigby's sure to scold her as is. All hands are needed in this sort of weather. And yet...

"Aye, me too," she says, giving Bovril a scratch behind the ears. "But I'm afraid I'll need a squick more help later."

He frowns, plainly confused.

"There aren't any big mirrors aboard," she explains.

"I'm sorry," he says, still frowning. He touches his head, well away from the wound. "I still don't..."

Barking spiders. She coughs into her fist and lowers her voice to a whisper: "You'll have to tell me if I've made a mess of the bandaging."

Bovril exclaims, "Chest!" and nearly falls off Alek's shoulder from giggling.

Alek goes red again. "Deryn –"

"I'll have my shirt on," she hurries to add. "My jacket, too. But it's been ages since I've tried, remember, and it won't do me any good if everyone can tell I –"

He cuts her off with an equally hurried, "It's all right. I'll help you. I promised, after all."

"Aye, so you did," she says. She blows out a breath and gives him a lopsided smile. "Sorry to test you this quick. I know you Clankers get a bit squeamish about biology."

"You're my friend," he says simply. Then he proves her point by shuffling his feet and staring at the floor, the ceiling, the wall behind her. "After – after dinner, then?"

"Aye. Not too late, though, since you're ill." On impulse, Deryn sticks her hand out for him to shake. He does. His hand is warm – too warm – and damp to the touch. She looks more closely at his face and sees he's gone pale and glazed again. "Blisters, you _are_ ill. I think you've got a fever, your princeliness. Best to lie down for a while."

"Yes," he says softly, looking at their clasped hands. He lets go and lifts his hand towards his head, but stops halfway this time. His smile is strained. "That would be best. I'll see you later, Deryn."

She steps back smartly and hurries off to her duties.

Behind her, right before she's out of earshot, she hears Bovril cackle and say, "A bit squeamish."


	100. love and war

**Note:** The Third Anglo-Afghan War lasted for a few months in 1919. (The British won... sort of. [Does anyone ever _really_ win a war in Afghanistan?]) It's notable as being one of the first conflicts where airpower played a critical role. But enough history… time for (at long last) some fic!

.

.

.

_War is like love; it always finds a way._

_- Bertolt Brecht_

_._

_._

_._

"What do you think?" Alek asks, keeping his voice to a soft whisper.

Deryn lowers the field glasses, ducks her head, and scoots backwards on the rock. Her boots dangle into empty air for a moment, and then she thumps down to the dirt beside him. "I reckon five hundred soldiers, at least," she says, also as quietly as she can.

It's only a guess. In the dark, and from nearly a mile away, she had to count the campfires. Not the most reliable method, but she isn't inclined to move closer for a better survey.

She hands Alek the field glasses again, no longer worried about some sharp-eyed Afghani soldier spotting the glint of starlight on the lenses. Behind this jumble of boulders, they can't be seen from the valley road. "Hard to tell if they're here for us."

"Let's hope they're pressing on to Kabul," he agrees. He hangs the glasses around his neck and tucks them into his jacket again, buttoning up against the cold. "Still, it shall make things rather inconvenient for the _Pegasus_."

Deryn rubs her hands together and blows on them, too, when the friction does sod all to warm them. She's cold, tired, hungry, thirsty, and barking sick of waiting for rescue. "Aye, if they ever get here," she whispers, scowling. "Sodding British Indian Air Service – can't find their bum with both hands!"

Alek smiles; his teeth gleam faintly in the dim starlight. "I'm sure you'll have them sorted before we reach Delhi, Mr. Sharp."

She smiles back at him. Even spattered with dirt and engine grease (and sporting two days' worth of stubbly whiskers), her Clanker is pure dead handsome. And if she had to be stranded in the middle of Afghanistan with anyone, she'd choose him, every time.

" 'Course I will," she says. "But the next time Dr. Barlow invites us along on a diplomatic mission…"

"Indeed," he says. He glances around at the mountains, looming up against the stars as though the land's hunched its shoulders, and grimaces. "They do tend to go awry."

Deryn starts picking her way across the uneven ground, shivering as the night wind gusts harder. Her jacket and trousers were perfect in the palace, and tolerable in the walker; now she'd rather have her old airman's leathers. "For a such a clever-boots, she's a terrible diplomat," she grouses, still keeping her voice low.

Alek follows her, his shoes skritching in the thin, rocky dirt. "No one could have predicted that the emir was going to start a war _now_."

Deryn snorts. Any _Dummkopf_ could've predicted it, if you ask her. Especially once they saw the not-very-secret stockpile of old weapons that Emir Amanullah had begged, borrowed, bought, and stolen from the dismantled Clanker empires.

Mere saber-rattling, Dr. Barlow had called it. According to the lady boffin, the emir couldn't possibly be mad enough to take on the entire British Empire with an ill-trained army of fifty thousand men and a handful of castoff relics.

If there's one thing Deryn learned in the war, it's that all kings are a squick mad – and that some are downright barmy.

She shakes her head and makes a small jump down into a dry streambed, landing lightly on sand and rounded rocks which have all but forgot the water that shaped them. Alek is right behind her.

"And you must admit," he says, leaning forward to speak close to her ear, mischief audible, "she's done an commendable job of preventing Volger from murdering our new friend Mr. Eckhart."

"That ninny deserves -" she starts to say, then breaks herself off when she hears a faint _skritch_.

She and Alek both look up at the same moment, to see two men with rifles coming around a tumble of boulders several yards ahead of them, apparently just as surprised by this encounter.

The men are wearing dirty, travel-stained peasants' clothes, not the splendid uniforms of the palace guards – but unlike the palace guards, they look like they might actually be able to sodding shoot something with those rifles.

Scouts.

So the five hundred soldiers _are_ here to find the emir's missing Stormwalker…

…and the five Westerners who nicked it.

"Bugger," Deryn says succinctly.

The word's hardly out of her mouth when one of the scouts (the one with a bandolier across his chest) raises his rifle to his shoulder and barks something in Pashto that probably means _Stop right there or we'll shoot you_.

But Alek's already lifted and aimed his compressed-air pistol. He fires with quick precision and the bandolier scout staggers backwards, dropping his rifle as he falls. The other scout exclaims and starts to lift his weapon.

The compressed-air pistol's not too loud. Only makes a bit of a _thwup_ noise. If that rifle goes off, however, every barking soldier for miles will hear it.

As Alek's firing, as the first scout is falling, as the second scout's exclaiming, Deryn's tugging her knife from her boot. She flips it over in her hand, pinching the blade between her fingers. Bends her arm back. Brings it forward sharply, in a straight, clean line. The scout pulls the trigger –

- the butt of the knife strikes him in the skull -

- his arm jerks -

- the rifle cracks like thunder -

- he goes down -

- something punches Deryn high in the side.

It steals her breath for a second. Only a second, though. Of more immediate concern are the echoes rolling through the valley and off the barren, rocky mountains around them.

She swears and jogs over to the fallen scouts, retrieving her knife and stuffing it into her boot again. They both seem unconscious, though the one Alek shot might be dead. "Blisters. We should tie them up -"

"There's no time," Alek says, catching her arm and urging her into a run alongside him. They race along the dry streambed as fast as the dim light allows, following it back to the marooned walker, grabbing each other for balance when they stumble. "Are you all right, _Liebe_? Did he hit you?"

"Aye, but it's just a scratch," she says. There's a bright line of pain high across her left ribs where she reckons the bullet grazed her. Still, it's not so bad that she can't run for her life. "How long d'you think we have?"

"That rather depends," he says. "Did you see any walkers?"

"No," she says, remembering. "But there were a bloody lot of horses."

Alek swears in German. "We have a few minutes until they reach the scouts. Then –"

Then it'll only be a few more minutes before the five hundred soldiers reach the walker.

The walker had carried them safely out of Kabul and into the mountains, where it came to rest a day ago. Alek had managed to use the last squick of fuel to maneuver the Stormwalker next to a great mound of boulders, but that's the only camouflage the machine has.

Luckily, the Afghani army hasn't got an air service, or they'd have been spotted by now. As it is, their luck is minutes away from running out altogether.

The lady boffin or Volger must be keeping watch for them, because the chain ladder tumbles down as they approach. Deryn climbs up first; the wound in her side pulls as her weight swings the ladder back and forth and her muscles tighten to compensate.

Mr. Eckhart snatches at her fearfully as she clears the hatch for the gunners' cabin. "Gracious Lord preserve us! What was that noise?" he asks, apparently having forgot that he spent the morning lecturing her about the sinfulness of girls wearing trousers.

"A pair of bloody scouts, sir," she says, and continues up the ladder to the command cabin without pause. Pastor George Eckhart is the worst combination: American, daft, and panicked.

"Well – what – are we under _attack_?" he cries after her.

"Aye, in a minute!" she calls back down. She gets her boots on the floor of the command cabin before her knees go wobbly and she has to lean on the curving hull of the walker. The viewing window's been cranked shut, and the glowworm lantern is casting a light so feeble it barely matters. At least the hatch in the walker's roof has been opened, to keep the air inside from going stale.

"A report, if you please, Mr. Sharp," Dr. Barlow says. In contrast to the pastor, the lady boffin is cool and composed: hair neatly coiled, bowler perfectly settled. The creased state of her dress is the only sign that she hasn't been attending a garden party these last two days.

Of course she's taken over the commander's chair.

"Yes – which of you managed to cleverly alert the enemy to our location?" Volger says, scowling at Deryn. The loris on Dr. Barlow's shoulder snickers.

She straightens, not because of the scowl or the snicker, but because a soldier ought to stand straight when she gives a report. "Best reckoning is five hundred soldiers, ma'am," she says, welcoming Bovril as it clambers onto her shoulder. She gives the count a look. "And it was the scout who fired that shot, not either of us."

"Did you – _five hundred_!" Mr. Eckhart exclaims from the gunners' cabin. His voice has gone a bit high and squeaky. "Lord have mercy!"

"Excuse me, sir," Alek says, full of princely disdain. There's a shuffle and then the bottom hatch clangs shut, and a moment later, Alek joins them in the command cabin.

Everyone shifts about, trying to find space. Three people make for a tight fit in the command cabin. Four people (and two lorises) is an out-and-out crush. Volger bows to the inevitable and retreats to the gunners' cabin, though not without a scowl.

Alek says, "We don't have long before they arrive, I'm afraid. We need a plan."

"A plan! _A plan?_" The pastor's head pops up through the cabin floor. His eyes are wide and his walrus mustache is twitching madly. "With five hundred of those - those bloodthirsty heathens bearing down on us -! There isn't – what sort of _plan_ could possibly –"

Deryn steps back and quite accidentally knocks the heel of her boot into the side of Mr. Eckhart's skull. "Sorry, sir," she says. "Tight quarters and all. You ought to get below again."

Mr. Eckhart stays where he is, rubbing his head and insisting, "We ought to run! A plan – that should be the plan! Running!"

"It would be a futile effort," Volger says from below the pastor. He manages to sound a trifle bored with the idea. "We have no food, no maps, and half a canteen of water. They would catch us before we'd made two miles – and if they did not, then the desert would kill us within hours of sunrise."

The pastor frowns mutinously. "God sustained Moses –"

"Quite true, Mr. Eckhart, but we are rather short on manna. We will therefore stay with the Stormwalker. However, we likewise short on fuel and have no weapons," Dr. Barlow says. She steeples her fingers. "What _is_ to be our plan, Mr. Hohenberg?"

"I agree that abandoning our position would be suicide," Alek says. "But the Stormwalker's armor should be more than a match for their guns."

"Aye, unless they aim for the rusted spots," Deryn says.

Alek looks down his nose at her – quite a trick, considering they stand eye-to-eye. He's stubbornly fond of Stormwalkers, even though the old buckets are five years and half a war obsolete. Clanker.

"Or if they have larger guns! Or cannons! – what if they have _cannons_?" Mr. Eckhart cranes his head to one side, trying to see Dr. Barlow. "Ma'am, really – this decision's too important – it's not a woman's place to lead – and a _boy_ shouldn't be -"

"Stop blethering and let's get on with planning," Deryn says impatiently. She's sorely tempted to give him another kick in the attic. "We'll die for certain this way!"

"Young _miss_," the pastor says, mustache bristling with indignation, "I think _you_ are –"

She never hears what Mr. Eckhart thinks she is, because Bovril suddenly pops up from its perch on her shoulder, large eyes turning to the open hatch in the roof. It trills and then makes a soft chittering noise that, at first, Deryn can't place.

Then she recognizes it: the sound of roosting fléchette bats.

The other loris flicks its ears forward and then lifts its head as well. It warbles a fair approximation of an officer's whistle and says, "All hands topside, lads!"

"Get that Huxley aloft!" Bovril demands, stretching both wee arms towards the hatch. Alek takes the loris from Deryn and lifts it through the opening, where it disappears from sight.

"Steady on," the other loris says.

"My," Dr. Barlow says, no more perturbed by the thought of miraculous rescue than she was at the thought of a horrid death. "This seems auspicious."

But some folks, it seems, are less familiar with the perspicacity of certain lorises.

"What!" Mr. Eckhart exclaims. "That creature - You'll let a lowly _animal_ escape, but _we_ must stay here to – to – Well, I won't!"

And with that, he ducks down through the floor hatch again.

"Does that _Dummkopf_ think he can just _leave_?" Deryn asks, incredulous. With five hundred enemy soldiers – and the _Pegasus_ – due any moment?

Evidently, that _Dummkopf_ does think so, because the lower hatch squeaks and squeals and clangs as Mr. Eckhart struggles to heave it open.

Alek swears and quickly starts down the ladder. "Mr. Eckhart! Wait!"

"Let the fool go," Volger says in German. He's off to one side, arms crossed, utterly disinterested in stopping the pastor from wresting the hatch open.

"He'll be killed," Alek says in the same, to which Volger harrumphs. "And he'll leave us vulnerable to attack!"

That must be more convincing, because the count steps in and seizes Mr. Eckhart by one arm while Alek grabs the other, hauling the pastor's bulk up between them. He kicks his feet madly, like a turtle on its back.

"Mr. Eckhart, you needn't worry," Dr. Barlow calls down. "We've survived far more unlikely situations."

The pastor's having none of that. He says, nearly wailing, "I thought the Lord had called me to deliver the – the Good News to these heathen savages, but clearly – it was – it was _Satan_ – tempting my vanity and – _my pride_!"

Deryn rolls her eyes. Americans.

Bovril chooses that moment to lean over the hatch opening and announce, "S-H-A-R-P!"

Just in case it's needed (and blisters, she hopes it is), Deryn retrieves the flare gun and stuffs it into the back waistband of her trousers before she climbs onto the back of the pilot's chair.

She pokes her head out cautiously, hoping not to get shot by a rifleman. In the distance – but drawing rapidly nearer – are the sounds of horses and soldiers, pounding across the desert night.

They're cutting this one a bit close.

"Where, beastie?" she asks of the loris sitting patiently beside her skull.

Bovril turns to face southeast. Deryn follows its motion and spots the airbeast straightaway. _HMS Pegasus_, searchlights swirling through the darkness, glinting off the occasional strafing hawk. Unmistakable… though also a squick distant yet.

"About bloody time, too," she says beneath her breath.

She draws the flare gun, lifts it over her head, and fires straight up. The gun kicks in her hands and the flare whistles its ascent. It blazes a dazzling red line across the stars and then hangs there, slowly burning and shimmering as it falls.

The _Pegasus_' searchlights whip around, follow down from the flare, and pin Deryn square in the eyes.

She twists away, blinking back tears. "Barking -!"

A bullet pings into the walker's side. Then another. Half-blinded, Deryn gets herself and Bovril through the hatch again before the riflemen can try to bounce any bullets off of them.

"_Pegasus_ knows we're here," she reports, a wee bit breathless. More bullets strike the walker; the metal clangs and rings. Deryn rubs hard at the spots dancing before her eyes; the wound in her side throbs in time with her pulse. "Though I may have given away our position."

Dr. Barlow lifts an eyebrow. "Indeed."

The loris on her shoulder sniffs haughtily. Bovril tsks at it.

"Well, we'll not have to worry about the soldiers anymore," the lady boffin says. "The crew of _Pegasus_ can't be incompetent at _everything_, after all."

"They're pure dead awful at navigating," Deryn says, dubious.

Now Dr. Barlow tsks. Her loris adds "Fah!" for good measure.

Deryn snorts, but doesn't further voice her opinion aloud. Instead, she looks down into the gunners' cabin, where Mr. Eckhart is sprawled, panting and red-faced, on the floor. Exhausted after two minutes of struggles.

Or not that exhausted, because as another volley of shots pepper the Stormwalker, he suddenly darts for the closed hatch. Alek and Volger catch him easily and hold him back as he blethers on about bloodthirsty heathen savages.

"Oi!" Deryn says sharply; the three men look up at her. "_Pegasus_ is nearly here. Mr. Eckhart, sir, if you'd quit carrying on like a ninny, we could get ready to escape."

The pastor sputters indignantly: "Carrying on! I am not – how else should I – with those barbarians trying to _kill us_!"

Alek rubs his arm across his forehead and says, weary, "The airship will chase them off, sir."

"What if it doesn't? Oh, Lord have mercy – what if we've lured those poor souls to their _doom_?"

On cue, a large gun whumps outside, but the shell's whistle arcs away from them. Deryn reckons that, far from luring anyone to their doom, the Afghanis are scrambling to defend themselves against the _Pegasus_.

The pastor yelps in alarm, then buries his face in hands, shaking his head and moaning. Volger mutters something filthy in German that Deryn can't disagree with.

"Further observation is in order, I believe," Dr. Barlow says, taking her skirts in one hand. Her climb onto the chair's back is much more elegant than Deryn's was, even if her loris is squawking like a bollixed-up message lizard the whole time.

Deryn, meanwhile, motions to Alek, who climbs partway up the ladder. She kneels on the floor and bends down so they can whisper properly, nose-to-nose. "If he stays this worked up," she says, meaning Mr. Eckhart, "we'll never be able to get aboard safely. He'll spook all the beasties and half the airmen, and probably get himself shot."

Alek nods absently, frowning at the ladder in front of his face. Then he lifts his head, meeting and holding her eyes. There's something sparking in his, even in the shadowy wormlight, that sends a shiver through her belly. "We need to distract him," he says.

Before she can reply _"Aye, but how?"_ he's turned his head slightly, though he's still looking at her. "Mr. Eckhart," Alek says over his shoulder. "Would you mind performing a wedding?"

Now the shiver is an electrikal current that steals her breath.

They've discussed marriage – barking spiders, they'dve better, they've been exchanging kisses (and more) for almost five years – but Deryn always had the vague idea of a church wedding. Formal and proper. A chance for Alek to look princely; a chance for her ma to stuff her into some horrid dress.

"A wedding…?" the pastor says. Puzzled, at first, and then aghast: "Good heavens – you're _not married_?"

"A state that some of us have labored to preserve," Volger says drily. "Alas."

Deryn hardly hears him, or the guns firing outside the walker's hull. All of her attention remains on Alek, who's looking worried by her lack of response. "If you don't –" he begins.

She cuts him off by leaning down and pressing a hard, fast kiss to his mouth. His whiskers scrape at her chin.

"Blisters – of course I do, daftie," she retorts, pulling back. She hadn't considered getting married today. Now that it's been mentioned, however, she finds she's rather keen on the idea. "You surprised me, is all. But it's just as well," she adds. "I think I'm up the kyte anyway."

He frowns, confused.

"_Gravida_," Dr. Barlow says from her perch, much to the delight of the lorises, who start repeating it back and forth. Deryn, of course, has no idea what it means.

"Oh," Alek says, understanding immediately. His ears flush pink and he clears his throat. "I see."

The pastor understands too. "Proof – incontrovertible! – that wearing trousers leads to the grossest immorality!" he exclaims, shaking a fist at nothing in particular. Maybe at her trousers.

Deryn exchanges a look with Alek, who shakes his head slightly, and then stretches up to give her a quick kiss of his own.

"I would have married you regardless," he murmurs.

"I know, love," she says, smirking.

He climbs the rest of the way up, taking her hands as he goes. They stand together, and the light in his green eyes is almost too much.

Happiness aches, warm and bright, in her own chest. It's all lovely if you ignore the cannons and machine guns rattling away outside.

"Young _lady_," Mr. Eckhart says, "you don't need a wedding. You need to renounce – renounce your sinful ways and beg forgiveness from Our Lord!"

Deryn squeezes Alek's hands and says, "Sod off, sir, and marry us."

Mr. Eckhart's eyes go so large that white shows all the way round. He sputters and gasps and turns an apoplectic purple before bursting out, "_Absolutely not!_ Such indelicate language – to a man of the cloth – I would _never_ -!"

"You will," Volger says coolly, interrupting the pastor before he can work up a good rant. "Resistance to their mad schemes is hardly worth the effort, I assure you."

"I most certainly will not!" the pastor blusters.

On Deryn's shoulder, Bovril cackles. "That ninny."

"Impeccable timing, Your Highness, if I may say so," Volger says, looking up at Alek. "Quite romantic as well."

"Aye, it's pure dead romantic, thank you," Deryn snaps.

Never mind the wound in her side, the grime and hunger and exhaustion on everyone's faces, and the firefight taking place on the other side of a few inches of rusty old Austro-Hungarian metal. It _is_ romantic.

"We did first meet under similar conditions," Alek says, looking about with a small smile tucked in the corners of his mouth.

Volger snorts.

"Well, it doesn't signify," Mr. Eckhart says, frowning fiercely, though his color has improved. "I can't – with all of this, out there – and you don't have a license!"

"The _Pegasus_ is almost directly overhead," the lady boffin reports, then clicks her tongue disapprovingly. "What _have_ their fabricators done to the caudal peduncles… If there's to be a wedding, I shall be pleased to stand witness. As will Count Volger, I'm sure."

"I don't know," Mr. Eckhart says. Now he looks merely perplexed, and not angry or panicked at all. "Couldn't it wait until we're onboard?"

"Please, sir," Alek says. " _'A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband_.' "

Deryn gives him a sidelong, suspicious glance, which he ignores with a determined air of innocence.

"Proverbs 12," Mr. Eckhart says automatically. "Well, yes – Well. You're right. And _'she that maketh ashamed_ –' " he pauses to glare at Deryn's trousers – " _'is as rottenness in his bones_.' Clearly you're in need – in very great need – of husbandly leadership, Miss Sharp."

"Aye," Deryn says, still eyeing Alek, who still isn't looking at her. "And he's in need of a barking _crown_."

"Go on, Mr. Eckhart," Dr. Barlow says, rising on tip-toe to peep over the edge of the hatch as the familiar shriek of strafing hawks on the attack drifts through the air. "Think of the inspiring story you'll have for your congregation: true love triumphant in even the most senseless theatre of war."

"An inspiring story," her loris repeats. "Triumphant."

Bovril adds a soft, scornful, "Fah!" and then both beasties fall to giggling and whispering "_Gravida!_"

"It's very irregular, but I suppose – if you're certain…" the pastor says, decidedly uncertain himself.

"It's destiny," Alek says firmly.

Deryn doesn't snort, but it's a near thing.

Mr. Eckhart moves to the bottom of the ladder and squints up at them. "Er – if the two of you could stand – Well, you are already… Really, I should be up there –"

"You're much safer down below," Dr. Barlow assures him.

Mr. Eckhart nods, absently touching his temple where Deryn's boot caught him earlier. He spends a moment straightening his jacket lapel and necktie before clearing his throat and looking up at them. "Marriage," he says.

For a moment, Deryn has a strong, dizzying sense that this is all some mad dream – that next minute she'll wake up in her bed in London, like always, and find the trip to Kabul and everything after is only the result of eating some potatoes that've gone off.

Then Count Volger sighs resignedly, and she knows it's _real_.

Which is quite dizzying on its own, actually.

Mr. Eckhart clears his throat again, more pointedly this time, and repeats, "Marriage." His voice is firm and sure – until the Afghani cannons fire again. "Marriage is what – brings us here – today. Marriage, th-that blessed – Oh, Lord Jesus have mercy –!"

Volger seizes the man by the arm and bears him up. "Carry on."

The pastor's mustache whuffles. "Right. M-marriage… As – as Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians –"

Dr. Barlow abruptly ducks down and yanks the hatch closed with a terrific bang, nearly dislodging her bowler in the process. No sooner has she done so than there's another, much louder noise outside – a **BOOM** that rattles the entire walker like a china teacup.

"Bloody hell!" Deryn exclaims. The lorises echo her.

The lady boffin dusts off her skirts, straightens her bowler, and neatly steps down from the chair. "Excellent news," she says. "In point of fact, the _Pegasus _is quite skilled in air-to-ground combat. My apologies for the interruption. Please, continue."

But Mr. Eckhart's gears appear to have locked up. He opens his mouth once or twice; no sound emerges.

"Oh, good God," Volger says impatiently, giving Mr. Eckhart's arm a shake. "Say 'man and wife' and be done with it!"

"M-man and wife," the pastor parrots weakly. Then he blinks, several times in rapid succession, and seems to come back to his senses… such as they are. He straightens, clears his throat, and declares, "By the authority of the great state of Illinois and the grace of the Lord God Almighty, I now pronounce you man and wife."

Dr. Barlow claps politely. The lorises cackle. Volger hmphs.

Deryn grabs a fistful of Alek's oil-spattered jacket and kisses him.

She means it to be another brief kiss. Alek, however, puts a hand around the back of her neck and holds her in place, gently but firmly, and she gets a bit lost in the familiar warm taste of him.

Her best friend. Her _husband_.

Dimly, she becomes aware of a new sound – metal drumming against metal in a hard, uneven, staccato rain. She breaks off the kiss and both of them look upward.

"O Lord! What's that?" Eckhart cries, panicked anew.

Volger sighs.

"Fléchette bats," Dr. Barlow judges. She taps one finger against her chin thoughtfully. "I hadn't considered their use as wedding bells."

Deryn sobers for a moment, thinking of the men and beasties outside, unprotected against that falling steel. Then she feels Alek's fingers weave through hers once more, and warm happiness flutters in her chest despite everything.

"Wedding bells," Bovril says, satisfied. "Mr. Hohenberg and _Mr_. Sharp."

"I haven't a ring for you," Alek says softly, rubbing his thumb across her scarred, filthy knuckles.

"That's all right," Deryn says. "I've got what I wanted."

"What's that?" Alek asks, though the princely smirk on his face tells her he already knows.

Deryn looks upward, where, beyond the hull of the Stormwalker, an airbeast is hovering, waiting for them to come aboard and leave behind all these worries about enemy soldiers and daft Americans. They're not out of the war yet – she's dead certain of that – but she grins just the same.

"A honeymoon aloft," she says.

.

.

.

**Very Special Note:** Oh, the places you'll go…!

When I started "Quite Peculiar," I never expected to make it to 100 chapters and nearly 100,000 words. I never expected to "meet" so many excellent fellow Leviathan fans & friends because of it. I _really_ never expected my little fic to get fan art and its own TV Tropes page!

I guess what I'm saying is that these last two-ish years have been a heck of a lot of fun and full of surprises, and I thank you for that.

It's been awesome, y'all. Here's to another 100! *toast*


	101. home to roost

**Note:** A tag to "charity begins at home." Apologies, Varlow fans! ;)

.

.

.

After the guests are welcomed, after the children are held and exclaimed over, after stories and drinks are shared, after everyone bids each other goodnight, Alan stands in the frame of the door and watches his wife brush out her hair.

Simple joys. Answered prayers.

"What do you think?" Nora asks, laying her brush aside. She means their guests.

"You do bring home the most interesting specimens," Alan says, wry.

"Indeed," she says. Satisfied. Turns to him, smiling, hand extended, hair lying unbound and lovely.

Alan Barlow is no fool.

He puts out the light and leads her to bed.


	102. face to face, part 2

**Note:** By popular demand, I'm continuing this! But really - if it's a modern AU you want, check out "Den of Thieves" by astudyiniris. It's funny, clever, and overall just lovely... what more could you ask for? :)

.

.

.

Alek's palms are sweating.

He notices this when he checks the time on his phone (two minutes later than it was), and for a moment he's sufficiently panicked to forget that Deryn's train from London is late.

_God's wounds_, he thinks, rubbing his palms flat against his trousers. He glances around at the other people waiting outside Cambridge station, wondering if they've noticed him fidgeting, and leans back against the metal bench. He _has_ to calm down. This is absurd, getting so worked up over a simple visit.

And yet – their first face-to-face had been such a disaster that this one, he feels, needs to be perfect in order to balance things.

He's made a mental list of things he should avoid doing this time. _Don't act like an arrogant, pompous ass_ is number one.

Alek groans and puts his head in his hands. He'd been surprised to learn that his online friend "Dylan" was a girl – understandably so – but there'd been no need to act as if she'd deliberately lied to him. He was embarrassed, he was humiliated, and he'd lashed out.

The simple truth: he had never asked if she was a girl. He'd never even thought to.

He hadn't much experience with girls. The few in his acquaintance only seemed to be interested in parties, clothes, boys, and horses (not necessarily in that order). He had therefore automatically assumed that anyone playing an online war game, with a male avatar, would be a boy.

"Only fools assume," Volger had told him at the time. "You should have informed me. We might have run a proper background check and spared you this melodrama."

The worst part was knowing that Volger was entirely correct.

For the rest of his time in the UK – nearly a week – he had toured universities while fuming and brooding over this perceived injury. He'd vowed to have nothing to do with Deryn ever again. And then, back home in Vienna, he'd logged on to his computer, saw that he had no new email, and realized that he was a fool in more ways than one.

He had just alienated his only true friend.

He didn't care if she wasn't a boy. He missed her.

He'd emailed her to tell her so, to try to make amends, only to find that she'd deleted that account. So he'd spent days trying to "accidentally" run into her online. But it she wasn't playing _World War Leviathan _anymore, and he didn't know where else to look.

In desperation, he asked his etiquette tutor what to do. "There's no substitute for a handwritten apology," _Herr_ Franck had advised.

A letter. A handwritten letter, sent by post. Old-fashioned, yes, but he _was_ desperate.

Alek had written his apology and express-mailed it (having asked Volger to please run that background check after all, in order to get her address) before he could lose his nerve. Then he'd waited.

_Had she gotten the letter?_

And waited.

_Had she tossed it into the bin without reading it?_

And waited.

_Or worse: had she read it and tossed it anyway?_

And finally, when he was beginning to think that it was all over, he'd checked his email and found what he'd been hoping for.

**I missed you too, ninny. Friends again?**

He'd sat back in his chair, smiling in relief. Smiling until his face ached with it.

After that it was like nothing had ever been amiss. They'd started playing the game again – as allies. They'd emailed and chatted, about everything and nothing. Then she'd convinced him, over Volger's objections, to install a video chat program, and they worked out a time that they could talk to each other. Every day – or nearly. Face to face…

…with most of Europe between them.

But it's different now. Now they're on the same island, shortly to be in the same city, shortly to be face-to-face for real. And _he's_ different. He's not that spoiled little boy he was two years ago, visiting her in Glasgow. He's at university – an adult, really. He has his own flat and his own car.

And he's quite probably in love with his best friend.

He groans again, but his self-pity is cut short by the unmistakable noise of an arriving train. The public address system announces that it's the train from King's Cross.

Deryn.

Alek checks his phone. Fifteen minutes late. God's wounds, the longest fifteen minutes of his life.

He stands and tucks his phone into his trouser pocket, wondering if he ought to have worn a jacket. Perhaps one of those hooded pullovers that Deryn likes so much. He doesn't own any, but he could have bought one.

People begin to emerge from the station, carrying briefcases, suitcases, bags, cups of coffee. Alek stays where he is; Deryn had been quite firm that they meet outside. He searches for a flash of sunlight on blonde hair, a brilliant grin, a face that he sees in his dreams.

He doesn't see her. She's not here.

A sick, cold sensation rises in his stomach. Where is she? What if something happened to her along the way? He knew it was a terrible idea to have her travel by herself. He should have gone to London, and never mind what her brother might have thought…

Or has she stayed away by choice?

_No_, he thinks, dismissing the idea as soon as it occurs. She would never.

But…

…where is she?

His phone rings. Alek curses and hurriedly pulls it from his pocket. His palms are sweating again – damn it all – and he almost drops it before he can answer.

"Hello?" he says, politely, heart in his throat.

A young man's gruff voice says, "Is this Alek, then?"

"Yes, this is he," he says, still polite, though his pulse goes faster yet at hearing the Scottish accent.

"Oi, hullo. It's Jaspert – Deryn's brother. She's had a bit of an accident –"

The cold feeling in his stomach gives a vicious twist. "What happened? Is she all right?" he interrupts.

Jaspert snorts. "She's well enough. Bashed her knee. We're in A&E… bastards keep you waiting all day."

Alek finds he can breathe again. "Oh," he says. "Well, is she – you're certain she's all right?"

"Aye, she will be," Jaspert says. "She'll not be _visiting_ anyone for a while, though."

Alek winces at the disapproval in Jaspert's tone, although he understands better, now, why Deryn had been adamant about sneaking out to Cambridge while Jaspert was scheduled to be at work all day.

Goodness knows what _Herr_ Franck would advise for this sort of situation. Alek clears his throat and says, hesitantly, "I – I greatly respect your sister, and I would never…"

But he trails off when he realizes Jaspert isn't listening. In fact, to judge from the muffled quality of that side of the conversation, Jaspert has his hand over the phone.

"No you bloody can't!" he's saying. "I'm not even supposed to be using this here -"

A girl says something in the background. The words are indistinct, but Alek knows that voice.

"All right, all right," Jaspert says, aggravated, and then he's back with Alek: "Deryn's being a right sodding pain. You get thirty seconds, and then I'm hanging up for you."

Before he can respond, the phone is handed over.

"Alek?"

Deryn's voice instantly brings to mind one of their conversations, much too late at night, both of them yawning and half-asleep, both of them unwilling to sign off. He had been perfectly content to listen to her then. He'd found her drowsiness… comforting.

Now, however, there's pain mixed in with the exhaustion, and he doesn't like that at all.

"Sorry I bollixed this up," she adds.

"Deryn," he says. He finds the car keys in his pocket and turns away from the station, gripped by a sudden, mad, undeniable idea. "It doesn't matter. Which hospital have you gone to?"

"Blisters," she says, incredulous. "Are you daft? You can't come all the way here."

"Why not? I have a car; it's not that far a drive. And I – would like to see you properly."

God's wounds, what an understatement.

There's a long pause. He crosses the street to the car park, fear twisting his stomach with every step.

Finally, she says, tired: "I want to see you too, Alek, but… We're two for two now, aye? Maybe it's not meant to be."

"Of course it is," he says – and realizes, halfway through, that Jaspert has hung up as promised.

Alek stares at his phone for a moment, fragments of a plan whirling and coalescing in his mind.

"It _is_ meant to be," he says fiercely.

Now, he'll have to prove it.


	103. seven days

**Note: **These were written for Dalek Week over on DeviantArt. The first story, "parents", is set between parts 1 & 2 of "face to face".

.

.

.

**1. parents**

.

.

.

Alek frowns at his computer screen. "What am I to do with a loris?"

Thousands of miles away, Deryn leans back in her chair, rummaging for more crisps. "I don't know, daftie. It's _your_ sidequest."

He checks the word describing the hatched egg. "It's 'perspicacious'. What does that mean?"

She Googles it. " 'Clever'."

"I was expecting something like… 'ferocious'."

She grins. "Babies surprise you, _Da_."

He straightens, indignant. "I'm not its father!"

"Right. You hatched it, so really, you're its mum."

He glares; she winks; defeated, he sighs. "Shall we invade Istanbul now?"

She grabs more crisps. "Aye, Ma, let's."

.

.

.

**2. roaring 20s**

.

.

.

Deryn shades her eyes. Squints down the fairway. They're only on the fifth hole, and she's already pure dead bored.

She whispers as much to Alek while the Zoological Society boffins they're accompanying are arguing over the number of strokes.

"Shhh," he says, frowning.

"You're listening to this blether?" Dr. Barlow was never _this_ tiresome.

Now he looks surprised. "Yes - it's quite fascinating. The rules are simple, but in practice the game seems to be much more complex -"

He goes on about strategy and calculations. Deryn sighs, facing this new destiny.

At least her golf clothes include trousers.

.

.

.

**3. blindfold**

.

.

.

Perhaps it's the practice she's had with her own that makes Deryn so deft at removing Alek's tie. It must be; he is hopelessly fumble-fingered, still, at undoing any of her clothing. Particularly those _verdammt_ bindings.

But Deryn strips away the necktie with hardly a break in their kiss.

"Mm? _Liebe_?" he murmurs, half-mad from the heat, the weight, the taste of her. Clarity returns, however, when she slips his tie around his eyes. "What…?"

"Hold still, love," she whispers. The wicked grin in her voice stops his breath.

Rather too late, he remembers how clever she is with knots.

.

.

.

**4. summer afternoons**

.

.

.

"It's too blistering hot!"

Deryn loosens her tie, pops one button free, and envies Alek.

Alek (three buttons undone) looks about the Zoo. She's right, but their options are limited. "There's... the lake in Regent's Park...?"

She gestures at her chest. "Splashing about won't help things, _Dummkopf_."

"True. Hmm... then perhaps we should find somewhere more secluded, where you can remove your disguise."

She smirks at him. "Are you trying to get my shirt off, Mr. Hohenberg?"

"Only for the sake of your health," he says, straight-faced.

"In that case," she says, wiping sweat from her forehead, "lead the way."

.

.

.

**5. WWII**

.

.

.

Sophie and Max run ahead on the path, laughing; Ernst drowses on Alek's shoulder, small, heavy, and warm.

"Not too far!" Deryn calls after them.

"Sometimes I wonder," Alek says to her, apropos of nothing, "what might have been if the war had gone on. Reparations nearly shattered Germany as it was. What if it had been worse? Would they have sought some measure of revenge? Started a new war to assuage their pride?"

She shrugs. Practical. "Doesn't matter now, does it?"

He smiles. "I suppose not."

She gives him a kiss, takes Ernst from him, and they walk on.

.

.

.

**6. obsession**

.

.

.

"We should visit your mother," Alek says – too casually.

Deryn looks up from her sketchbook. One eyebrow lifts. "Because you miss her terribly?"

"Of course."

"Not because there's a golf course only a wee distance from her house."

"Your accusation is entirely baseless," he says. Then he adds, hopeful: "Do you think that if I bring my clubs…?"

She rolls her eyes. "I think you need a new obsession, love. That game's barking daft."

He smirks. "But it's very Scottish."

"Aye, laddie, and so am I," she retorts, and kisses him.

He forgets about golf then…

…for a while, anyway.

.

.

.

**7. generations**

.

.

.

The lone round tower still stands, bold against the clouds.

"Grandda?"

Alek drops his eyes. His granddaughter is tugging his sleeve with one small hand. She stares up, awestruck.

"Did you really _live_ here?"

"Yes." Sixteen years of memories in that word.

"_Golly_," she breathes.

He looks over at Deryn, walking in the rose garden with their son, then back to the castle. His father built this; his mother made it home.

Now Alek lives thousands of kilometers away, and Konopischt is a museum.

Pain pricks his heart, but he smiles. Takes his granddaughter's hand. "Would you like a tour?"


	104. or leave a kiss within the cup

**Note:** Someone requested a Deryn and Alek make-out scene. _Honestly,_ people, hasn't there been enough kissing already?

But anyway, here you go: 1,780 words of snogging, set immediately after the infamous bonus chapter. (And _that_, in case you haven't heard about it/seen it yet, can be found on Mr. Westerfeld's site.)

.

.

.

"God's wounds," Alek says, batting the feather out of his face as she shuts the door. It's too late; he sneezes. "That's quite a dangerous hat, Mr. Sharp."

Deryn rattles the door handle to be certain it's locked, then turns, nearly smacking Alek in the face with the feather again. "Aye, but I'm supposed to be a peacock. I needed a feather _somewhere_."

She'd expected tonight to be an ordeal. Stuffed into a dress, paraded around a party with boffins and the richest, most famous folks in London… none of that had sounded enjoyable.

But to her surprise, she's having fun. More than that: there's a lightness in her chest, a _giddiness_, that she can't credit to the champagne. Half of it is from having Alek here with her. And the other half is from the gobsmacked look on his face when he first saw her in this barking dress.

"No one is here to notice the lack of plumage," he says, gesturing. Indeed, the changing room is empty except for the two of them and Bovril, who's mincing about in front of the mirror in its wee dress, snout held high like a proper lady.

Aside from the mirror, there's a divan, an armchair, and a rack of carefully hung men's suits. Bowler hats are lined up in a neat row along a shelf. A dead fancy glowworm lamp hangs from the ceiling. And if Deryn put out both arms at once, she could brush the two walls with her fingertips.

Small and dark and cozy. Perfect.

She smirks at Alek. "A girl for five minutes and already you're blethering on about fashion, _Mr_. Hohenberg…?"

He steps closer and lays a hand, lightly, on her waist. His fingers burn right through the fabric and into her skin. In the heeled boots he's wearing, she notices, he's much closer to her height. "I fear it might get in the way," he says quietly, only an inch distant; his breath is warm on her cheek.

She could lean forward and kiss him. He could lean forward and kiss her.

Anticipation crackles in the air between them, hot and dangerous as electricity.

"Aye, well, in that case," she says, and hands him the bottle of champagne she'd left on the divan. "Hold this."

He takes it and fiddles with the cork while she pulls out the hairpins keeping her hat in place. She plucks the last one free just as he succeeds in popping the cork. Foam overflows and splashes his skirts; he swears.

"D'you have to give it back?" she asks, meaning the dress. She tosses the hat onto the armchair, takes the bottle, and plunks herself down on the divan.

He picks up Bovril to set it on the armchair as well. It begins poking at the feather, making the end bobble. "No, as it happens."

"Then sod it," she says, "and come sit down with me."

He moves to do just that, then hesitates and gestures at the bustle on his dress. "I'm not sure I _can_ sit down."

She has to laugh. "Now you see why I was so quick to trade skirts for britches!"

"Indeed," he says, giving her a rueful grin as she takes pity on him and gets him settled on the divan. His old-fashioned skirts billow up around him, but there's no way to help that. "You are the soul of wisdom."

" 'Course I am, daftie. Cheers," she says, saluting him with the champagne and then taking a swig. It tickles the back of her throat on the way down. She passes the bottle to Alek, who echoes the toast and takes a drink of his own.

They trade the bottle back and forth for a few minutes, chatting about the mad costumes they've seen tonight. She's slightly alarmed to hear that Adela Rogers is nosing about – this sodding dress was picked to dazzle Alek, not to protect her disguise – but reckons she's in the best available hiding place already.

Somehow they end up scooting closer, so that they're pressed together from shoulder to knee, her right foot sneaking between his – three dainty girls' shoes in a row. And then he's running the beads on her necklace through his fingers and saying, "You make a beautiful girl."

The giddiness and the champagne cloud her attic with bright, fizzing bubbles. "So do you," she says.

"No," he says firmly, amusement and embarrassment coloring his voice. "I most certainly do not. But you… God's wounds. I knew you were amazing. I didn't know you were… that you were…"

He's got that daft expression again. It doesn't usually make her skin prickle and her mouth go dry, but maybe it's only because he's still toying with the string of beads, his knuckles sometimes brushing against her body. "What?"

He studies her for a long moment, green eyes serious. Instead of answering her properly, he closes the distance between them and kisses her.

Barking spiders, she likes kissing him.

His lips are soft and warm, and his hands slide up her arms to her shoulders, trailing fire.

Aye, it's lovely. But when he starts to draw back, she finds she's not content with one soft kiss. Deryn reaches up to cup his face and hold him near. Kisses him again – mouth closed at first, the way all their kisses have been. Then she pushes her tongue against his lips.

He immediately stiffens and pulls away with a startled _Mm!_ and a shocked, slightly horrified expression.

She can't say she blames him. The first time she'd heard (eavesdropped, from her perch in a tree above them) Jaspert and his daft friends talking about kissing girls open-mouthed, she'd thought it was pure dead disgusting. Only after she started kissing Alek did it sound _exciting_.

"Alek," she says, heart thudding, "stop being a perfect sodding Clanker and give it a try, hm?"

He stares at her for a moment. Then he clears his throat and says, "If you insist, Miss Sharp," with a touch of bravado that tells her he's still not certain about it, but can't think of why he should object.

This time, when she opens her mouth, he copies her. It's hesitant and awkward, as neither of them know what they're about. She doesn't care, because something clicks into place as soon as their tongues touch, and a hot thrill runs through her belly.

"Right," she says, only it comes out more like _Mmph_. And then he's kissing her harder, deeper, putting his hands on her waist and pulling her closer, tighter… which is just fine by her, since she's doing the same to him.

It's more than exciting. It's pure dead brilliant. Every nerve ending, every life-thread, is burning white-hot, and her blood is roaring in her ears. She finds herself up on her knees, leaning over him, trying to get their combined skirts out of the way so she can press even closer. Why haven't they tried kissing like this before? She could carry on all night.

Or until they overbalance and fall off the sodding divan.

It's not very soldierly, but she yelps on the way down, and _oofs_ when she lands.

For a moment they both lie stunned and breathless and half-tangled with each other, and then they start to laugh. The giddiness returns. Deryn presses her face to the perfumed cloth over Alek's collarbone and feels the vibrations of his laughter tremble through her own skin and bones.

She loves his laugh. She wants to hear it all the time.

Above them, Bovril cackles, and it brings them out of their giggles.

"Barking spiders," she says, using the edge of the divan to hoist herself up again. "I wasn't expecting _that_."

"Most undignified," the loris contributes.

Alek needs her help to get to his own feet. Once he's vertical and his skirts have been tugged straight, he touches his mouth, wincing. "_Scheiße_. I think I bit my cheek."

"I'll kiss it better, then," she says, happy, and grabs for the front of his dress, pulling him in again.

"Wait!" he says, hurriedly backing away from her. He gets caught up in his skirts and nearly trips, but catches his balance at the last moment. "Deryn - not that I didn't, ah, enjoy that, but -"

"-but you're a perfect sodding Clanker," she finishes for him.

"No!" he says, indignant, then checks himself. "Well, perhaps. But Volger and the entirety of the Zoological Society are on the other side of that door, not to mention Miss Rogers. This may not be the best time."

She puts her hands on her hips. Even with the bubbles fizzing up her attic, she can see the sense in what he's saying. Still… "_Scheiße_," she says.

His mouth quirks up in a smile. "Indeed."

She looks at the divan, calculating, then back at him. "No more kissing for tonight, then. No more champagne, either. We'll just… sit and talk, aye?"

"That sounds excellent," he says.

They sit again, a cautious distance apart, and start talking about their plans for tomorrow. A safe enough topic, as it mostly involves the Zoo and running Dr. Barlow's errands.

After a few minutes, though, Alek clears his throat. "Could we… It wouldn't be dangerous to hold hands, would it?"

Bovril cackles, but when Deryn throws it a quick, suspicious glance, it's toying with the peacock feather again.

"Safe as houses," she says to Alek. So they do.

Of course, Alek has to scoot closer to her in order to find a more comfortable position, but, well, that's only his daft skirts getting in the way. They have an agreement, after all. A sensible agreement that'll keep them out of quite a lot of potential trouble.

It therefore takes nearly five more minutes before Alek's pushing her back and down against the divan, one hand buried in her hair, muttering something about "_verdammte Kleid_" in her ear as they're both trying to maneuver around the heaping skirts.

She takes her mouth away from the wonderfully salty skin of his neck to ask, "What's that mean?"

He shakes his head. "I hate dresses," he informs her, breath hot and close on her face. "Don't ever wear one again."

"Only if you promise the same, Mr. Hohenberg," she says, grinning.

A single, short hiccup of a laugh. "God's wounds, I promise."

"Aye, all right, then," she says. Happiness and wanting bubble inside her chest, and somewhere in the tangle of fabric she finds his other hand and weaves their fingers together. "No dresses."

_Although_, she thinks as he runs his tongue along the roof of her mouth, _if this is what dresses lead to… _

…_we might have to reconsider._


	105. eight days

**Note:** I actually wrote _eight_ little drabbles for Dalek Week. Whoops!

.

.

.

**8. potatoes**

.

.

.

"Papa," Sophie whines, "why are we having potatoes _again_?"

"Because they're quite nutritious," Alek says, putting one on Max's plate as well.

Sophie looks at her potato, disgruntled.

Alek leans forward and whispers, "And because it's the only thing your mother can cook."

Sophie and Max break into giggles. Alek leans back again - and receives a punch to the shoulder.

"The only thing I can cook, either," he amends as Deryn sits, baby Ernst in her arms.

Deryn smirks. "I _suppose _we could toss this in the bin and -"

"Go for fish and chips!" Sophie cries, excited.

So they do.


	106. felix culpa

When Alek emerges from the _Leviathan_'s jury-rigged wireless room (a necessity, now that they are traveling with American Clanker airships), he is thoroughly irritated with reporters, wireless communication, Count Volger's insistence that he answer certain questions on his own behalf, and the fact that he has missed dinner in order to satisfy Eddie Malone's curiosity.

Some of that ire fades, however, upon finding Deryn standing in the hallway. Hands in her pockets. Leaning a shoulder against the thin, fabricated balsa wall. Nonchalant. Waiting for him.

"Done with that bum-rag?" she says.

Alek nods, briefly making a face. "How can someone be so tiresome from halfway across an ocean?"

Deryn snorts and pushes off the wall. "Aye, it's a talent. Come on – I saved you some food."

He regards her for a moment, limned as she is by the green wormlight of the hallway's lanterns. The warm certainty that has settled in his chest since New York glows brighter. Of course she kept back dinner for him.

"Thank you, Mr. Sharp," he says, to remind himself that he can't take her hand or – God's wounds – kiss her. Though he would rather like to.

"Any time, your princeliness," Deryn says cheerfully. "_Mr. Hohenberg_, that is."

Alek smiles, his annoyance at the world entirely washed away, and falls in next to her as she begins walking down the hallway towards his stateroom. "At least now that I've renounced my titles, I shall never have to talk to another reporter."

She snorts again. "Not sodding likely. I mean – you're a prince that quit to be a zookeeper, aye? Until they know _why_, they'll never let you alone."

This is true. In point of fact, Malone had asked him _why_ several times. Alek had declined to answer directly.

He looks at the extraordinary girl beside him, and wonders if anyone could truly understand his choice without first knowing Deryn Sharp – all of her, not only the face she shows to the world. Her secrets, her fears, her joys. The worn-smooth edges on her father's medal.

He says (perhaps a touch arrogantly), "They hardly deserve the honor."

Deryn slides him a sideways look, blue eyes clever and dangerous. "What was that Latin blether you told Malone, then?"

Oh. So she'd overheard. Well, not surprising; the walls _are_ thin.

He clears his throat. "The Hapsburg motto. _'Let others wage war.'_ You know that."

"Not that part. The other bit."

He stops walking, and she stops as well, turning to face him.

"Something about Austria being happy, isn't it?" Deryn asks, though the smirk on her face tells him she knows very well.

Blast. Alek feels his face and ears heating. He's not embarrassed, exactly; it's only that he hadn't thought to broach this topic for quite a while yet. Two days hardly seems a long enough courtship for talk of this sort.

"In a manner of speaking, I suppose." Alek takes a fortifying breath. " _'You, lucky Austria, shall marry.'_ "

The final word hangs in the air, or maybe that's only his perception. Deryn makes no response for a moment: merely holds him fast with that smirking gaze.

Then she looks over her shoulder, checking the empty hallway, before leaning down and kissing him full on the mouth.

It's soft and electrik and over rather sooner than he would like. But it is also a promise – an unspoken answer to an unspoken question – and he finds himself grinning like a perfect fool as they part.

Lucky, indeed.

Deryn grins widely as well – though she also takes a half-step away and self-consciously coughs into one fist. It's difficult to tell in the dim light, but he's fairly certain that she's blushing. Good; he should hate to be the only one.

"You said that you had rescued my dinner," Alek says, returning them to a less perilous conversation.

"Aye, if Bovril hasn't eaten it all by now. There _were_ strawberries." She tugs her jacket straight. "Ready, Mr. Hohenberg?"

"Of course, Mr. Sharp," he says, sketching a shallow bow.

She grins again; he takes his place beside her; and they continue on as they've begun.

.

.

.

**Note:** A _felix culpa_ ("fortunate fall") is a bad event, or a series of bad events, that leads to a happy outcome.


	107. face to face, part 3

**Note:** I'm aliiiiive! I'm also in a new position at work, and I started taking taekwondo, so my free time has pretty much been cut to nil. Apologies for the 3-month gap. How would you like some Jaspert fluff? *holds it out on a tray*

.

.

.

Jaspert is having one of those days.

It's the sort of day that begins with almost being late for work because, in trying to be a good host, you've scorched your fingers cooking breakfast for your sister. Then, scarcely an hour later, you have to leave work and go straight home again because your sister has managed to get her knee bashed in and thinks she may need to go to hospital.

It's the sort of day where you sit in Accidents & Emergency for sodding _forever_, only to find your sister's more worried about missing a meeting than talking to the police or listening to what the physician's telling her.

It's the sort of day where you learn your sister's been chatting online with some bastard named Alek _for two barking years_ and that her entire reason for coming down to London wasn't because she missed you as she'd said, no – it was to get close enough to Cambridge to sneak the little sod a visit.

It's the sort of day where you finally take your sister home (hoping the taxi drivers of London are properly bloody grateful for the small fortune you've handed over today), get her settled, and have to turn around again to go fill her prescription. Then, when you _finally_ sit down – in a chair that doesn't bruise your arse like the ones in hospital – someone knocks at the door.

Jaspert tips his head back and groans. It never ends.

"If you've forgot your keys again, it's your own bloody fault," he calls out as he goes to the door, supposing it's his flatmate.

But it isn't. In fact, he finds himself face-to-face with someone he's never seen before. "Aye?" Jaspert says, eyeing the shorter lad suspiciously.

"Hello," the stranger says, very polite. "Are you Jaspert Sharp?"

"Aye," he says again.

The lad's got perfect posture, but now he somehow stands even straighter. "It's a honor to meet you, sir. Is Deryn here?"

Jaspert takes in the posh clothes, the German accent, the determined gleam in his green eyes, the uncanny knowledge of Deryn's whereabouts.

"Bloody _hell_," he says, and shuts the door in Alek's face.

Maybe the bastard will take the hint and leave. Jaspert rather doubts it.

He goes to his room, where Deryn's occupying his bed until Ma can come fetch her home. Her knee's propped up on a mass of pillows, the bag of ice lying atop; the crutches are leaning on the wall next to her head. She's got her earphones on and her eyes closed. For a moment he thinks she's asleep, but then she shifts and cracks one eye open.

Jaspert stands over her, crosses his arms, and demands, "How does your sodding boyfriend know where I live?"

She frowns and takes her earphones out. Music blares from them, tinny and indistinct. "What?"

"_Alek_. Why's he standing outside my door?"

He watches a hundred different things flash across her face, wondering what she'll settle on. Anger, apparently, as she scowls and exclaims, "I told him to stay in Cambridge!"

"And Ma told you not to give out your address to bloody _strangers_ on the internet," Jaspert retorts.

"I didn't!"

Jaspert snorts.

"Get stuffed! I _didn't_." She stretches an arm out for her crutches, which he'd set just beyond her reach. She's not supposed to get out of bed for the rest of the day (excepting visits to the loo, of course), and if Jaspert has his way, she'll stay put until Ma arrives. "Is he still here?"

"Aye, probably," Jaspert says, intending to be heartless and let her flounder about… but actually watching her struggle is too much. He sighs. "Don't get up, Deryn, I'll let him in. But I'm telling Ma, you know."

"Fine," she snaps. He can feel her glare on his back all the way out of the room.

Jaspert pauses with one hand on the doorknob, telling himself that he doesn't really want to speak to the police two times today, and definitely not as a suspect, and then - properly fortified - opens the door.

"She's not to get out of bed," he says to Alek, whose resolute expression immediately becomes anxious. "You can come in, but only for a bit. She needs rest."

"Of course," Alek says hurriedly.

Jaspert reckons he'd agree to anything. He rolls his eyes, but steps aside and lets the wee bastard in. Alek dogs his heels all the way to the bedroom – where, Jaspert finds, Deryn has managed to sit herself up. She's pushing her hair behind her ears when he walks in, and yanks her hands down into her lap almost guiltily.

_Deryn_. Fussing over her hair because a boy's come round.

This is the bloody _apocalypse_.

Even worse: Jaspert now gets to stand off to one side, completely unnoticed, as Alek draws to a halt in the middle of the room and the two of them stare at each other.

"You _Dummkopf_," Deryn finally says. "What are you doing here? I said not to bother!"

Jaspert rolls his eyes again. Not that he was hoping to witness some teary-eyed, flowery reunion, but the bastard did drive over fifty miles in City traffic to see her, and that deserves some sort of… well, girlishness.

Maybe not quite the apocalypse after all.

"Yes, and I chose not to listen," Alek says. He lifts his chin and regards her with a stubborn, evaluative look that seems almost princely. "What on earth happened to your knee?"

She grimaces. Her foot twitches a bit on the pillow. "My own fault, really. Didn't hit that first tosser hard enough."

Alek looks aghast, which (damn him) is the proper reaction. "You were in a fight?"

"Aye, tell him," Jaspert says, leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms over his chest. "Tell him all about the three strapping lads you took on for no sodding reason."

"I had a reason," she retorts, glaring. "They tried to nick my bag. Your birthday present was in there," she adds in Alek's direction.

"God's wounds, Deryn, I'd rather have you safe than have a _birthday present_!" Alek says back. Shouts, really. Furious. Hands clenched into fists by his sides, as if he could strike out at the hooligans who'd tried to rob Deryn and settled for maiming her instead.

Also the proper reaction. Bollocks.

Jaspert looks to his sister, wanting to catch _her_ reaction. When he'd said more or less the same thing this morning, she'd told him exactly where he might stuff it. He suspects Alek'll get a different answer.

Deryn holds Alek's fierce glare for a long moment, then shrugs and looks at her hands, which have knotted themselves in the blanket. "Aye, well. It's over there, if you want it."

Alek maintains the glare for another long moment – too long, as there's a sudden loud banging on the door and a very familiar voice yelling, "Oi, Jaspert! You in there, mate? I've forgot my keys!"

It never. Sodding. Ends.

Jaspert uncrosses his arms and pushes off from the doorframe, hoping Alek has enough survival instincts to not get up to any foolishness while unsupervised. (Deryn hasn't, obviously, or her ACL wouldn't be in need of a surgeon's attention.)

He yanks the door open. "Bloody hell, Newkirk, if you knew the day I'm having –"

But Eugene pushes past him with cheerful obliviousness. "Thanks, mate. Saved my life! Have you seen my Oyster card?"

"No," Jaspert says shortly. Eugene shrugs and begins searching the sofa for his wayward card. Jaspert cranes his neck, trying to see into the bedroom without actually going back there. He's not hearing any talking. Never a positive sign.

"Ha!" Eugene exclaims. He's been on his knees, one arm under the sofa, and now he stands, blue plastic rectangle clutched triumphantly in his hand. "I knew it was here. Er – d'you want to come with us? Arsenal's playing –"

Jaspert's already shaking his head. "Can't," he says, jerking a thumb in the direction of the bedroom.

"Oh, right," Newkirk says. He claps Jaspert on the shoulder on his way out again. "_You're_ playing host. Say hello to Dylan for me, aye?"

His flatmate is dead clever with his work, but in the rest of the world – no. Newkirk mistook Deryn for a boy on her arrival three days ago, and has yet to figure out the truth. Deryn finds it funny – suggested the name, actually. If it prevents Eugene from "flirting" with his sister, Jaspert's all for it.

"Aye, I will," Jaspert says. Eugene disappears with a wave and a shouted farewell as the door closes behind him, keys forgotten yet again.

Jaspert puts his hands on his hips and looks towards the bedroom. Still not hearing any talking.

_Bollocks_, he thinks. The good news is, Ma's in such a state over Deryn's knee that this probably won't be noticed. Much.

He'd like to fetch a knife from the kitchen and burst into the bedroom like that fellow from _The Shining_. Instead he strolls back, pretending he isn't intensely interested in what they've got up to in his absence. "Visiting hour's about over, Alek."

Unfortunately, the wee bastard is sitting on the folding chair at the computer desk, out of arm's reach of Deryn and thus too far away to justify a thrashing.

It seems the argument's over, though, since Deryn's bag is lying unzipped at Alek's feet, and he's holding up a bright blue hoodie with a St. Andrew's cross emblazoned across the front and back.

Jaspert scowls at that. Alek's not Scottish, and he mislikes the thought of Deryn stuffing him into their flag. Almost as if she's branding the sod as _hers_.

Jaspert also isn't pleased by the wide, daft grins they're giving each other. He might be in for some flowery girlish apocalypse after all. He makes a strategic decision to pick a fight: "Christ Jesus, Deryn, you got your knee bashed for _that_?"

But the comment rolls off her back. She holds up something small and red, still grinning. "Jaspert! Isn't this pure dead brilliant? Alek got it for me – a late birthday gift."

Jaspert squints. A Swiss Army knife. It is, actually, a brilliant gift for Deryn.

_Damn_ this boy.

"I didn't know if I could send it through the post," Alek says. He stands, hoodie in his hands, and inclines his head in Jaspert's direction. "I thought – since we were going to meet – I would save it… and when you didn't, um… that's one reason I came here. But I apologize for the intrusion. I'll leave now."

"Aye, have a safe drive," Jaspert says brightly, standing clear of the door and gesturing towards the exit.

"Wait," Deryn says quickly, sitting herself up higher again. "Don't be such a bum-rag, Jaspert. He could stay for dinner at least. You said you didn't have class tomorrow, aye, Alek? No worry about getting back too late."

Alek hesitates. "I don't wish to be a burden," he says carefully.

Jaspert narrows his eyes at his little sister. He's torn between kicking out this Internet stranger with perfect posture and clever presents, or keeping the happy sparkle in her eyes. He lefts himself waver a moment longer, pretending he could be heartless if he really wanted to, but she deserves something nice after a day like this… bloody hell, so does he, but that's another story.

"For dinner only," he declares, arms folded over his chest. "You do need to rest."

"Oh, aye, dinner only," she says, nodding.

Which is how Jaspert finds himself ordering curry takeaway for three.

… and how he finds himself, a few hours after that, dropping a heap of blankets and pillows on the floor beside the sofa and bidding Alek goodnight with a hard squeeze to the shoulder and a whispered, "Leave this spot and they'll never find your body, aye, mate?"

That done, he fixes up his own makeshift bed in the doorway to the bedroom and prepares to lose several hours of sleep to guard duty. Can't be worse than what he did in the RAF.

He looks over his shoulder at his sister, practically snoring under all those prescriptions. Ma will be here sometime tomorrow. He'll have to kick out the wee bastard first thing, then clean up so Ma doesn't fuss at him and Eugene for living like pigs – _and_ take care of Deryn, including helping her to the loo and getting her dressed…

"It never ends," he says. He sighs, tips his head back against the doorframe, closes his tired eyes, and murmurs, "Doing the best I can, Da."

Aye, doing the best he can… even on one of those days.


	108. loris, interrupted

Bovril is having the most splendid dream (imagine! – a strawberry bigger than its entire body, and all for itself!) when it is rather rudely awakened.

A human foot connects with Bovril's pillow at the lower end of the bed. Glancingly, but it's enough to send the loris tumbling.

Bovril squeaks in alarm and grabs for the thick blanket as it falls. Some of its claws manage to snag in the fabric. The loris finds itself hanging upside-down over the wooden panels of the floor… and slipping.

"Mayday!" it exclaims, hoping that its People are awake to hear.

And indeed, there's a half-asleep curse from further up the mattress. The bed bounces and jars and Bovril feels strong, familiar hands close around its abdomen just as its paws lose their grip altogether.

"Sorry, beastie," _Mr_. Sharp says softly, setting the loris on her shoulder and giving it a much-needed scratch beneath its chin. "I reckon that was my fault."

Bovril takes a firm grip on her nightshirt. It waits a moment until the wobbly feeling in its limbs subsides. Then it strokes a paw down her cheek in reassurance, murmuring, "Quite all right, madam, quite all right."

On the other side of the bed, Alek rolls over and says in bleary German, "Deryn? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, love," she says in English, climbing back to her customary spot, though she doesn't get under the blanket again. "Did I kick you?"

"No. But you seem to have kicked Bovril." Alek sits up and puts a light on, and they all squint and blink for a moment. "That wasn't 'nothing'."

She hesitates. Gives Bovril another scratch, this time between its ears. The loris leans into it and purrs.

"I might have had a wee nightmare," she says to Alek.

He pushes a hand through his hair, which is rather mussed. Alek doesn't like having mussed hair, but he also does not like when Bovril attempts to help him groom it. How silly.

"About your father?" Alek asks. He yawns.

"No," _Mr_. Sharp says. She frowns. "About my wedding dress. Sodding thing tried to eat me."

Now Alek frowns.

Bovril can't frown, but it flicks its ears lower and makes a rumbling noise in its throat. It would, on the whole, much rather be dreaming of strawberries still than attempting to parse through this. Wedding dress... It knows about those. White. Worn by brides. Banns, flower bouquets, veils, church bells, priests, _Let no man put asunder_.

Try as it might, however, the loris cannot connect any of those pieces to the wedding _it_ observed.

"Your wedding dress," Alek repeats. He rubs his hands over his face. "_Liebe_, you didn't _have_ a wedding dress."

"You didn't," Bovril agrees, pleased that someone else remembers this.

_Mr_. Sharp yawns and scrubs a hand through her hair. (She doesn't mind if her hair is mussed, and she always laughs and thanks Bovril for grooming her.) "Aye, and lucky so, since the bloody things are carnivorous."

Alek squints at her. "Deryn – are you winding me up?"

She shrugs with the shoulder not occupied by Bovril. "Maybe just a squick."

Alek attempts to stifle another yawn, and fails. He puts his back to _Mr_. Sharp and Bovril, scooting down and tugging the bedcovers up to his chin. "Do so in the morning, then. I'm too tired to appreciate it right now."

_Mr_. Sharp watches him for a moment, a small smile on her face. Bovril has observed this particular expression many times. When it's directed at Alek, there are particular events that inevitably follow.

"Down you get, beastie," she whispers to Bovril, nearly inaudible, and – as predicted – lifts it from her shoulder.

Bovril's hopes that she will place it on its pillow again are quickly dashed. Instead, much to its disapproval, _Mr_. Sharp sets the loris on the floor, which is rather chilly.

"Blisters," it says, lifting one paw and then the other. It peers up at the bed now towering above it. "Pillow. _Mr_. Sharp."

This is a terrible angle for observation. Bovril can see nothing.

And no pillow is forthcoming. Instead, the loris hears the bed creak as _Mr_. Sharp shifts her weight towards the other side, and then she asks Alek, "What if I'm too scairt to sleep?"

He moves as well, to judge by the sound. "You aren't. You never are. The last time you had a nightmare, you fell asleep again before I did."

_Mr_. Sharp hmms. "Maybe this time I need some comforting, aye?"

The bed creaks. A small, soft noise. Bovril tilts its head, chuckling to itself even as it shivers. Wedding dress. _You may now kiss your bride_.

"Mm. Deryn," Alek says, somewhat breathless. "As lovely as this is - it's two o'clock, and we have a meeting with Dr. Barlow at seven."

"Dr. Barlow can sod off," _Mr_. Sharp says. Bovril's ears twitch in something approaching irritation; it's heard that phrase before, and right now it has other concerns anyway. Namely -

"Pillow," Bovril says.

The pillow does not appear. Perhaps no one heard it. There are a great many small noises now occurring on the bed, after all.

"Pillow," it says again, more loudly.

Someone puts the light out, and the room is abruptly plunged into darkness again. More creaking. A nightshirt slides off the bed and onto the floor beside Bovril.

It seems there is to be no pillow.

Bovril stretches its front legs, then its hind legs, and then begins to evaluate the nightshirt's prospects as a replacement pillow. Somewhat lacking in cushioning… however, it is cozy, warm, and smells like one of the loris' People. Excellent.

It steps into the garment and rearranges it slightly to make a better nest. Then it turns around three times and settles in – its back carefully towards the bed.

Above and behind it, the loris hears Alek gasp and _Mr_. Sharp snicker.

Bovril flicks an ear. "Carnivorous," it says to itself, disdainful, and goes back to sleep.


	109. and flights of angels

Leaves rustle; birds sing.

Sophie whispers, "Maude says no one has funerals for fabs."

"Maude's a ninny," Deryn says. Exhales. "Besides, Bovril wasn't _only_ a fab."

Ernst, face buried in Alek's trouser leg, sniffles loudly.

Max swallows. Says bravely, "We shall carry on, even… even without Bovril."

They all regard the small patch of dirt beneath the apple tree.

"Do beasties go to heaven?" Ernst asks, quavering.

Deryn and Alek exchange a worried glance over their children's heads. She lifts an eyebrow.

"Of course," Alek says.

"Good." Ernst wipes a sleeve across his eyes. "Bov will love ballooning with Grandda."


	110. last dance

**Note:** This is for Catsdon'tcry, who requested "Deryn's thoughts at a spring dance in Glasgow before she meets Alek and her thoughts on love and daft village girls."

(And yes! – I got to use one of my reoccurring OCs! This is probably only exciting to me. :D )

_._

_._

_._

_"You'll wear a dress, and you'll dance with a lad, __**and**__ you'll smile while you're about it."_

Easy for her ma to order; more difficult for Deryn to actually carry out.

She's wearing the dress, no mistake, and everything that comes with it: ribbons, lace, boned corset, starched and scratchy knickers. She's danced with a lad – three, in fact. The smile… ah, now, there's the tricky bit. She smiled for the lads while she was dancing, but it hasn't stuck.

Deryn finds a chair along the edge of the room and sits. She's supposed to cross her legs at the ankles and keep her spine straight, chin up, chest out, elbows in. Like a lady.

She plants her feet wide apart and slumps forward, propping her elbows on her knees and resting her chin in her hands.

Daft. This is all daft.

Not the dance itself, mind. She likes dancing well enough, and she doesn't mind the music (it's loud, rather than good), and it _is_ nice to escape the round of chores Ma has for her at home.

There's plenty of food at dances, too. Always brilliant.

No, it's the company that she finds daft. She watches the other girls, the ones that don't mind lace and ribbons and boots that pinch your feet. They don't notice her at all. Too busy twisting up their hands in their skirts and giggling at lads with plooks on their faces, who step on their toes when they dance, who'd rather huddle in a far corner with their mates and blether on about rugby.

And why? So that one day, if they ever manage to get the boys away from rugby, the girls can twist their hands in their skirts and giggle about weddings. Until then, they seem content to dream about love.

Deryn rolls her eyes. Pure dead rubbish. You'll never find _her_ mooning over a boy, of that she's certain. That sort of thing is only suitable for girls who haven't anything better to do than flutter and sigh.

Deryn has something better to do. Too right she does. She has a proper plan instead of a starry-eyed dream. Aye, it's a squick mad, maybe, but it's a plan just the same. And as soon as Jaspert comes home on leave, she'll -

Someone taps her shoulder. She starts and turns, nearly cracking her skull against that of Jamie Duncan, one of Jaspert's friends.

"Blisters!" she says, jerking back.

Jamie puts a hand on her shoulder and his mouth next to her ear. "Your ma says," he confides in an amused voice, barely audible under the music, "to sit like a lady."

Deryn snorts. Twitches her shoulder out of his grip... and, reluctantly, crosses her legs at the ankles and sits straighter. If Ma said that, it means she's watching; and if she's watching, it means she'll be over next, with a less friendly reminder. "Aye, is that right?"

"Aye," Jamie says cheerfully. He hooks a nearby chair with his ankle and draws it closer to Deryn's, then sits himself in it. "I suppose she doesn't see the sad, sorry truth."

She lifts an eyebrow.

"You won't ever be a lady," Jamie says, straight-faced. He reaches out and gives her plait a quick tug behind her back. "In fact, you may not be a lass at all."

He's winding her up, she knows that, but it makes her heart clatter against her ribs anyway. A bit too close to what she means to do when Jaspert visits next month. Still, she tells herself that if Jamie Duncan thinks she's hardly a girl, and him knowing her since she was in nappies…

Maybe this won't be the disaster Jaspert and her ma expect.

Jamie's watching her. Smirking.

"What am I, then?" she says with the glare he expects, crossing her arms over her chest to hide the mad, hopeful feeling bubbling there. For a moment she can almost feel the sun against her face. Smell the hydrogen spilling into the air.

Jamie only laughs. It's a jolly sound that you can't help smile at, even if you're dead annoyed with him. "Had a word from Jaspert lately?" he asks.

"Aye," she says. Carefully. Her heart thumps in her chest again. "He's got a bit of leave coming soon."

"Brilliant. I've bloody missed that sod," he says, clapping his knees. He stands and extends a hand towards her with a mock bow. "Celebrate the good news with a dance, Miss Sharp?"

Deryn regards the outstretched hand warily. "Did Ma ask you…?"

"What d'you think?" Jamie says, rolling his eyes. Then he winks. "You're to be swept off your feet."

She sighs. Ma never stops _pushing_. As though she'll throw over all her plans for a lad at a dance! So close to the sky again, only to be trapped on the ground by hopes of a wedding band, a house, and bairns – no thank you.

Besides: any boy worth fluttering over would be right beside her, urging her on.

"Aye, all right," Deryn says, but doesn't take Jamie's hand. Instead she stands up on her own and walks, ahead of him, to join the dancing.


	111. leaving the nest

**Note:** Happy belated Valentine's Day, and happy early 3-year anniversary to "Quite Peculiar"! I'll be honest – real life has been kicking my butt. I haven't been able to do much writing at all lately, and it's bumming me out, man. But I stole a few hours and wrote this for y'all. Enjoy! ;)

.

.

.

When Jaspert comes downstairs near midnight, he finds his ma where he left her, hours earlier: sitting in her favorite armchair before the fire, embroidery hoop in her hands and basket of thread at her feet.

The difference is that now, she's not smiling at the aunties, needle flashing deftly in the firelight as they gossip over the particulars of Mary Turnbull's upcoming wedding. Now, she's alone and motionless, staring into the dying flames of the hearth, face blank and bleak and unseeing.

Jaspert hesitates. She hasn't noticed him, and he's only come down to pilfer the kitchen pantry anyway. But… that empty stare…

It puts shivers down his spine, to be truthful.

"Ma," Jaspert says, crossing the room. He lays a hand on her shoulder; she flinches, then looks up at him.

"Oh, it's you, then," she says. A false smile. This close, he can see how tightly she's gripping the wooden hoop; her knuckles show stark and white. "You startled me. Can you not sleep, dearie? I could heat some milk -"

"I'm fine, Ma." Jaspert draws the footstool over and sits on it, though that hasn't been comfortable since before his last, greatest spurt of growth. His knees are in his bloody ears, but the indignity matters less than the familiarity. He used to sit here and listen to Da tell stories – until Deryn grew old enough to fight him for the footstool.

Then Da had died. And the stories stopped.

Ma had been halfway to rising, but settles again. Her false smile falters a bit. "Is Deryn asleep…?"

Jaspert snorts. Deryn can always eat, and she can fall asleep no matter what's going on around her. He, on the other hand, wakes up at all hours, and this daft adventure they're embarking on tomorrow left his stomach too curdled for much dinner. "Aye, of course."

Ma looks down at her embroidery, the smile sliding straight off her face. She takes a deep breath and turns the hoop in her hands, slowly, round and round. "I expect that will be useful, where she's going."

The fire pops, wood shifting. Jaspert worries at his lip for a moment, watching his ma, then gets up to put more wood on the fire.

"She'll be all right, Ma," he says with her back to her. "She'll be with me on the _Minotaur_. I'll have her safe."

Silence. Jaspert focuses on building up the fire again. There's a pressure against his spine that he doesn't care to face. The room still echoes with the storm Deryn had unleashed earlier, when she'd announced her intention to take up as a boy and join the Air Service.

Then, quietly, like a pebble dropping into a winter pond: "I know."

He straightens and turns. In the stronger light, he can see the wet glimmer in his mother's eyes.

"Ma," he says, made helpless by guilt.

She shakes her head, producing a handkerchief and dabbing away the tears one-handed. The other hand grips the embroidery hoop so tightly Jaspert fears it might splinter. "It's all right, Jaspert."

It isn't, and they both know that. If it was all right, he would be leaving for London alone, and Deryn would have been numbered among tonight's gossiping ladies.

Coming home for the first time in ages, Jaspert had been shocked at how much his sister's light had dimmed. He'd listened to the whole of Deryn's mad, impossible plan and been shocked anew – at the greatness of her desperation.

Of course he'd told her she was being daft. Listed out all the ways it could - would - go disastrously awry.

But in the end, he'd agreed to help. How could he not? His little sister.

It might not be what Da would've wanted; then again, Da let Deryn get away with everything short of sodding murder, so he might instead be laughing, delighted by her pluck and daring. Either way, there was no chance of Ma being pleased.

A tricky business, being the man of the house.

"She'll be safe," he says again. He returns to the footstool, balancing his forearms on his knees and leaning forward. "If she makes it aboard, which she likely won't, it'll only be a few weeks before she's dead tired of it, I'm certain. The Air Service isn't the lark she expects."

Privately, he _isn't_ certain. Just the opposite, in fact. His sister is brazen, determined, and terrifyingly clever, with the best natural air sense he's yet seen. He suspects Deryn's going to take to life aboard an airbeast like a fish to water.

Or rather, like a bird to the sky.

Ma nods. She tucks the handkerchief away and frowns at the embroidery draped across her lap. Softly, she says, "I'd thought, after your Da… Well. I'd thought maybe, if she had some practice at being a proper girl, she might… she might find herself happy here."

She touches the careful stitching. It's a pattern of flowers and leaves, with songbirds perched on the twining vines. In the firelight's unsteady shadows, they seem to shiver and flutter. Jaspert thinks of Deryn, and imagines the vines have trapped the wee birds' feet. No matter how hard they flap their wings, they'll never fly free of the cloth, unless someone comes along to snip the thread.

He wonders if he's not the one holding the scissors.

"But it's not meant for her," Ma says. Resignation and bewilderment take equal weight in her voice: "This life, it's not for her. I have to let her go."

Jaspert stands. Gently tugs the embroidery hoop from his ma's unresisting hand, then sets it on the side table and draws her to her feet as well. He wraps his arms around her and hugs her, hard, squeezing his eyes shut against the familiar smell of her perfume.

Once, a lifetime ago, he would run to her with the smallest hurts, clutch around her knees, bury his face in her apron, let her smooth his hair and press kisses to his cheek until he forgot his greetin. Now she clings to him, seeking the same sort of comfort. But there's no way to soothe this wound: Deryn running as hard and fast as she can, away from every dream their mother wanted to give her.

"Aye, Ma," he says, trying to keep his voice level. "It's for the best."

"It's for the best," Ma repeats. She steps back, and something of her usual self returns in the brisk nod and confident, "Aye."

"I reckon I might want some warm milk," Jaspert says, nodding in the direction of the kitchen. "With a biscuit, maybe. Or two."

She gives him a smile – weak and watery, but real. "Come along then, dearie, and we'll put the saucepan on. And what do you think I ought to make for breakfast in the morning? Something special, hmm? Your last home meal for a while…"

Ma starts for the kitchen. Jaspert lingers before the fireplace for a moment longer, looking at the embroidery hoop with its trapped wee birds, then at the black-edged photograph of Da on the mantle.

"Midshipman Dylan Sharp," he says quietly, testing it.

Then he, too, goes on.


	112. right where you live

**Note:** Is this… is this… an update? With _more_ of my favorite OC? Yes! Yes it is! And we can blame Anne, who requested "_a post-Goliath chapter with your OC Jamie and a squick of jealousy_". Happy to oblige! :)

PS - the chapter title is from a very excellent Jem and the Holograms song: _Someone else is in your place/ And you won't forgive/ And it's hittin' you right where you live._

.

.

.

Jamie Duncan arrives late to the party. It's not his fault; he wasn't aware there _was_ a bloody party, let alone the reason for it. If it hadn't been for his ma saying, "_And still in trousers, too, what a scandal she is!"_ just as he'd come in the door tonight, he would never have known that Deryn Sharp was back in Glasgow.

Irksome. That's the word for it. He's one of Jaspert's oldest friends and no one's thought to tell him.

Jamie takes the steps to Mrs. Sharp's house lightly, cheerfully, and pauses a moment to straighten his cuffs and smooth his hair. Then he raps on the door, brisk and confident.

What will she look like, he wonders idly. He's never seen her in trousers, only skirts and dresses. Girls in trousers… Sounds unnatural and tempting all at once. He's sure she carries it off perfectly well.

According to his ma, Deryn's cut her hair, too. Shame; it had been lovely.

The noise of people and music swells suddenly as the door opens. It's Mrs. Gibb, the housekeeper, her wrinkled face flushed beneath its white cap. Jamie grins and sketches a bow. "Good evening, young miss."

"Mr. Duncan," the housekeeper says, smiling at him, charmed in spite of herself. "Lovely to see you again. Here for Miss Deryn's party, then, are you?"

"Aye," he says. He glances around and lowers his voice conspiratorially: "Though I haven't an invitation. You don't mind letting me sneak past...?"

Mrs. Gibb steps back from the door, holding it open for him. "I'm certain you're welcome, Mr. Duncan."

"Thanks, love," he says, winking and dropping a kiss on her cheek as he enters the house. She clucks and shoos him off.

Harmless, daft flattery. The sort that opens doors everywhere.

Inside the house is stacked to the rafters with people: the Sharps' neighbors, Mrs. Sharp's particular friends, cousins of all sorts and all ages, and several of Jaspert's other friends.

"Oi, Jamie," Ned says, catching sight of him in the front hall. He elbows through a small knot of folks without spilling a drop of whatever drink he's got in hand. "Didn't think you were coming!"

Jamie shrugs and plucks Ned's glass from his fingers, swallowing it down before the other lad can protest. It's only punch, he's disappointed to note; no one's had the decency to add a splash of anything stronger. "Wasn't sure of it myself. Where's the fair maiden?"

Ned stops giving him a dark glare long enough to say, "Holding court in the parlor, I expect."

"Aye, thanks," Jamie says. He presses the empty glass into Ned's hands and claps his friend on the back. "Best pay my respects, hmm?"

He makes his way to the parlor, stopping to say hello and chat along the way, and detouring to find another drink. No need to go rushing in, as if he's _that_ desperate to see his friend's younger sister. When he finally does get there, he finds the room crowded, and is forced to take a position just inside the door.

Jamie leans against the wall and exchanges pleasantries with the lady sitting on the divan to his immediate left. One of Jaspert's aunts, he thinks. Maybe an older cousin. Mary, he thinks her name is. Or Margaret.

Deryn is across the room, perched on the back of a sofa, boy's boots planted on the cushions (her ma will cheerfully murder her for that, Jamie knows from experience), blue eyes gleaming, hands gesturing, telling wild stories to her rapt audience.

Holding court indeed.

Jamie smirks. Then he notices the stranger beside her – a lad with dark hair and a stiff, uncomfortable set to his spine. "Who's that?" he asks the auntie, leaning down to whisper and to point at the stranger without being noticed by anyone else.

"Oh, him?" she says. "The prince?"

Jamie's eyebrow lifts. "Prince."

"Aye, Prince Aleksandar. Oh, but he's not a prince anymore, it seems. Haven't you heard? It's been in all the papers."

Jamie abhors newspapers, or, indeed, anything that requires him to think seriously about the world. He shakes his head. "Been that busy, I'm afraid."

The auntie makes a noncommittal, skeptical noise. "Well," she says, lowering her voice even further, "it was quite a fuss. Gave up all his titles and a chance at the Austrian throne to be a zookeeper in London, they said."

"I see." Jamie looks at the so-called prince again. Aleksandar. A Clanker. Who is, at this moment, watching Deryn very closely. She pauses in her story, turns to Aleksandar, and gives him a wide and brilliant smile. He smiles back, and when Deryn reaches for his hand, he doesn't let go.

A stab of something unpleasant in his gut makes Jamie grimace, swirl his punch, and take a good sip. Why is there no bloody whisky? "Sounds a bit mad."

Deryn looks lovely in trousers, and the short hair suits her better than plaits did. She seems happier than Jamie's ever seen her.

The auntie chuckles. "Sounds like there's to be a wedding, sooner or later."

Now it's Jamie's turn to make a noncommittal noise. He pushes off the wall, excuses himself with a wink and smile for the auntie, and walks away from the parlor before the taste in his mouth becomes too sour to hide.

No one notices him collect his coat and leave. He shuts the door behind him and stands on the top step for a moment, blinking into the relative darkness of the street.

That hadn't been at all what he'd expected. But – aye, honestly, what _had_ he been expecting? The little sister who'd stubbornly insisted on joining all their games? The pretty young lass who'd dared him to kiss her, then gave him a good kick to the shins when he said he liked another girl more?

Or maybe the pale, drawn ghost he'd wanted to jolly out of her sadness.

Jamie doesn't have a care for many things, or many people.

It seems like Deryn's not to be on the list.

Jealousy burns at the back of this throat and closes hot claws around his chest. For a moment he wants nothing more than to march back inside and confront the wee Clanker bastard who's taken what ought to have been his… but even as his shoulders tense and fists tighten at the thought, he realizes how daft he's being.

She's not his. Never has been.

"Ah, well," he says to the empty air. "Never mind, then."

He laughs, short and sharp and bleak, the closest he'll come to admitting defeat. Then he pushes his hands into his pockets and makes his way down the street towards home, whistling as he goes.


	113. what's past is prologue

"Blisters! Was it this bloody cold the last time?"

Alek, who has lost the feeling in his fingers and his feet, sighs through the scarf tugged over his mouth. His breath puffs out, white against the blue sky. "Yes, I'm afraid."

The Alsatch glacier stretches out in every direction around them. From the air – or, for that matter, from the walls of his father's castle – the field of white looks smooth. As Alek already knew, that appearance is a lie, but he is rediscovering just how much of a lie it is.

At least this time he's had Deryn to trudge alongside him, and Bovril to warm the inside collar of his shirt.

"Stormwalker," the loris says now. Its voice is muffled by the scarf.

Alek and Deryn draw to a halt. She shakes one snowshoe free and puts her hands on her hips, squinting at the tumbled snow and ice. "Where, beastie?"

Alek consults his map and compass. Yesterday, from the castle parapets, they'd worked out the _Leviathan_'s approximate position at the time of its crash; the scars of its impact are still visible here and there, even with the better part of five years of glacial movement to erase them.

Reckoning the location of his Habsburg House Guard Stormwalker had been an even less certain endeavor. It had wrecked somewhere in between the castle and the _Leviathan_, near the blackened ribs of the burned German zeppelin, but of course he had not made a record of the exact coordinates. Additionally, there's no way to know if the Germans had salvaged it after the great airbeast's departure, or destroyed it completely to keep it from enemy hands.

"Over there?" Alek says, nodding at a particularly large tumble some ten or fifteen meters away. Then he frowns and checks the map again. They seem to be slightly too far east of the zeppelin. "Possibly."

Deryn is wearing her scarf at a haphazard angle that covers nothing more than her chin; her breath wreaths her face. "Let's cross our fingers it is," she says, starting in that direction. "There's snow in my boots already, and I don't fancy any frostbitten toes."

"Blisters," Bovril says.

"Aye, exactly."

Alek falls in beside her as they struggle across the ice. "Thank you for this," he says. "I know you would have rather stayed at the aviation conference in Bern."

She shrugs, then grins. "You can _thank_ me tonight, Clanker. Anyway, I don't mind. I've some fond memories of this glacier."

He looks at her, remembering a skinny, unconscious boy with a black eye curled in the lee of the airbeast's immense bulk. Alek had gone on a mission of mercy that night, but in the end, he knows who truly saved who.

"So do I," he says.

As they draw closer, it becomes obvious that the large mound of snow and ice is in fact concealing machinery, and not a stray boulder. Alek's pulse quickens. He tells himself not to hope. It's altogether very unlikely –

"Stormwalker!" Bovril exclaims. It wriggles until its nose pokes out of the scarf beside Alek's ear, shortly followed by the rest of its head. "Bloody cold," it adds, ears flattening and fur rising.

Alek reaches up and pats the loris with a gloved hand. It purrs and burrows down into the scarf again. He doesn't blame it; burrowing sounds like a splendid idea. He's looking forward to doing just that when they return to the castle.

"Bovril seems convinced," Deryn says. She stops, stuffing her hands into her jacket pockets, and jerks her chin in the direction of the derelict. "But you're the expert on this particular Stormwalker, Mr. Hohenberg – what d'you think?"

He carefully approaches the wreck. The bomb had knocked them starboard and onto their side; Klopp and the Leviathan crewmen had removed the engines without shifting the walker. The pilot's cabin should be right…

Here.

Time has buried it another foot or more, but the viewport is much the same as it was the last time he saw it – snow spilling inside, making a hazardous slope in and out. One edge of the double-eagle's wing is visible on the large Hapsburg crest below the viewport. A thrill runs through him: excitement and dread all at once.

"This is it," he calls to Deryn as he removes his snowshoes.

She grins, wide and brilliant, and starts toward him. "Can we get in?"

There's only one way to test, so Alek grabs both sides of the rusting viewport and half-climbs, half-drags himself up the snow pile. He can indeed fit, though it's far tighter now than it was at fifteen. "Yes."

She sheds her own snowshoes and clambers up after him; they're both aware she can manage perfectly fine on her own, but he can't resist catching her hand and helping her step from the frozen snow to the ruined metal of the cabin.

Deryn ducks her head, whispering, "Barking spiders, I'd forgot how small it was in here."

They _are_ standing rather on top of one another. "It seemed larger then," he says softly, looking around. At least the temperature is marginally less frigid now that they're out of the wind.

She hmms in agreement. "And not half as dark. Do I have the lantern, or -?"

"No, I have it." He takes off his pack and draws out the glowworm lantern, setting it on what used to be the wall and is currently the floor. He whistles and the glowworms come to life, one by one, a bit sluggish in the cold. Alek looks over his shoulder at Deryn, who's smirking at him.

"Darwinist," she says.

"Your fault entirely," he says. He pulls his scarf down and rubs his hands together. Now that they're inside, he hasn't the slightest idea of what to do next. Finding the Stormwalker seemed so unlikely that exploring it – well, he hadn't given it much thought. But it's ridiculous to have made the trek only to do an about-face and return to the castle. "I think I'll look around the cabin."

"I'll see if the Germans left anything below. Well, bloody _sideways_ now. Where did you have the gold stashed…?"

"There," he says, gesturing at the open – decidedly empty of gold; decidedly full of drifted snow – compartment.

"Those bum-rags," Deryn says, wrinkling her nose. "We could've sodding used that money."

Alek isn't fooled. "You hardly need another balloon, _Liebe_," he says with a smile.

She huffs a laugh. "I'll _always_ need another balloon."

Still smiling, he turns to make an examination of the pilot's cabin, while she climbs through the hatch to the gunners' cabin.

Time, harsh weather, and an open viewport have not been kind to his Stormwalker. The leather of the three chairs is water-stained and ragged, split in many places to reveal the metal frames beneath. Rust is eating away at whole of the structure: brown patches have spread in a way remarkably similar to certain fungi.

The control panel is likewise in ruins. Alek runs his hands over the frozen, rusting gauges. He's thought of this machine so many times in the last five years. The desperate month he'd spent in the pilot's chair has largely blurred into one jumble of hazy recollections. Darkness, fear, exhaustion, determination.

Somehow, being here again lends the memories a fresh clarity – a sharpness of focus that is almost palpable. He can smell the hot metal, the permeating sickly-sweet odor of the fuel… can feel the saunters coming alive beneath his touch… can hear the German bullets pinging off of the armored plating, the men around him calling out…

Alek lifts his hands away and takes a breath of mercifully cold air. It dispels the ghosts.

Most of them, anyway.

He adjusts the lantern with the full knowledge that it will do nothing: the glowworms will not produce enough heat to warm the cabin. Still, the brighter green light does its own dispelling, and he feels better.

In the other cabin, Deryn thumps against the wall, shaking snow and rattling ice. She hisses in pain. "Blisters!"

Alek straightens from the lantern. "Are you hurt?" he asks, still keeping his voice hushed. This seems the place for quiet tones. Too haunted. A memorial to a future, a plan, that destiny erased before it could begin.

She appears in the open hatch, rubbing at her head. "Just knocked my skull."

"Ah," he says, mock-serious. "No chance of damage, then."

She snorts. "The Germans took everything that wasn't bolted in place," she says. She puts one hand on either side of the hatch and hoists herself up and through, landing with another shake and thud in the pilot's cabin again. "And some of what was, if I remember correctly."

"Yes, here as well," Alek says. He looks around and feels hollow. Suddenly, he wishes they had stayed in Bern; barring that, he wishes they had stayed in the castle. "I suppose we should be grateful they didn't set fire to it."

"Aye," Deryn agrees.

"I suppose," Bovril says. It cautiously wriggles the tip of its nose out and then the rest of its head, peering around the cabin. The loris has to shuffle around Alek's neck to do so, of course keeping its body tucked inside the scarf. Alek smiles down at it, then glances at Deryn, who's likewise watching the creature's antics with amusement.

"Anything else you'd care to do?" she asks Alek. "Have a picnic, maybe?"

He exhales. "No. I only wanted to see it again, but -" He breaks off, searching for the words, and switches to German: "There isn't anything here."

The words echo against the empty metal shell around them. He shivers, and tells himself it's only the temperature.

She gives him a sympathetic smile. "If you ask me," she says in German, soft, reaching for his hand, "there's plenty here."

Their fingers, thick in their gloves, nonetheless catch each others'. Alek squeezes once, hard, then relaxes his grip, though he doesn't let go. Deryn above all else is worth holding on to.

"I stand corrected," he says in English.

"Aye, as usual," she says. She presses a kiss to his cold cheek; her lips aren't any warmer than his skin, and he shivers again. "Let's go back to the castle, then."

"I'm rather looking forward to a nice fire," he says as he stoops to retrieve the lantern.

"And dinner," she says, taking the lantern from him and securing it to her own pack with quick, deft movements that, unfortunately, involve letting go of his hand.

"And dinner," he agrees.

"And _dessert_, love," she says, flashing a wicked grin that would, under less frigid circumstances, warm him from head to toe.

He clears his throat. "That as well," he says – and she laughs at him. The sound echoes and bounces in ringing peals, almost deafening. The knot of old ghosts unwinds in his chest, leaving him infinitely lighter, and he smiles at her.

"Dessert," Bovril says, burrowing into Alek's scarf again. Muffled, it adds, "Strawberries and cream!"

"Aye, beastie, all you can stomach," Deryn says. She winks at Alek, and he finds he is also able to laugh.

They climb out of the Stormwalker and refasten their snowshoes. Alek lays his hand on the double-eagle crest for a moment longer than necessary, then dusts the powder from his gloves and squints at the horizon.

"What," he asks as they begin the long, exhausting return trek to the castle, "would you even do with another balloon?"

Deryn tells him, her hands outlining plans in the air, and in the end Alek is too busy thinking about the future to even once look back at the past.


	114. face to face, part 4

**Note**: I hope you're in the mood for a lot of Newkirk in a modern AU, 'cause by golly, you're gonna get it!

Also, I have a crossover fic going: "Kidnappers, Clankers, and the Coming Thing". Even if you've never heard of _The Adventures of Brisco County_, Jr. (and I expect you haven't, because many Leviathan fans weren't alive/watching TV in 1993), I heartily urge you to give it a try. There's kissing! spies! explosions! lorises in peril! ...and more! In short, it's lots of fun. ;)

.

.

.

Eugene Newkirk wakes up only because some sadistic bastard is running the vacuum approximately six centimeters from his skull. His poor, aching, throbbing skull.

"_Gahh_," he says, rolling over, dragging the pillow atop his head, and squeezing his eyes more tightly shut. It doesn't help. In fact, the hoovering continues unabated. Louder, if anything. Closer.

He surfaces just enough to glare over his shoulder. Ah, no, terrible idea – it's too bright, and now his head hurts more. "Jaspert, what – What are you bloody doing?"

Jaspert switches off the vacuum. Newkirk squints at it. When did they get a vacuum?

"Cleaning, mate," he says cheerfully. Sadistic bastard.

Now Newkirk squints at the floor. Somehow his laundry has been collected into one heap by his bedroom door, and there's a noticeable lack of empty takeaway boxes and mostly-empty Squash bottles. "Why?"

"Ma's on her way to fetch De- _Dylan_; she'll be here in a few hours. And she has her suspicions, but she doesn't need to _know_ I've been living in filth, aye?"

Newkirk takes a moment to think about this. His brain seems to be made of dry cotton, just like his tongue, but he supposes Jaspert's statement is reasonable. He rubs his hands against his face. "But why so _early_?"

"It's going on half-ten," Jaspert says, smirking at him. "Had a bit too much last night?"

"I was overserved," Newkirk says.

Jaspert chuffs a laugh and then – switches the vacuum on again.

When glaring balefully at his flatmate doesn't succeed, Newkirk decides he might as well fetch a glass of water and some aspirin. Just a pill or two. Half a bottle, tops.

Accordingly, he drags himself from the bed and pushes past Jaspert (means to shove the bastard, but Jaspert's not hung over and dodges easily), then staggers like a proper zombie into the living room.

Where he finds himself face-to-face with people. Two of them. One on the sofa, leg propped up on a mass of pillows, and one sitting cross-legged on the floor. Both with laptops out and open.

Newkirk scrubs a hand through his hair until his brain kicks in and he recognizes Dylan. Jaspert's brother. No, his cousin, or something like that. The other boy… he hasn't the slightest.

"Good morning," he says. Tries too, anyway. It comes out more like "Guh" but he doesn't care. He shuffles to the loo and gets the aspirin, then shuffles to the kitchen and pours a glass of water. And that's altogether exhausting, so – since the sofa's occupied – he drops into one of the chairs at the table, and lets his forehead come to rest on the cool, cool particleboard surface. God bless IKEA.

In the other room, Jaspert stops hoovering. God bless Jaspert.

"Morning, Newkirk," Dylan says.

"Uhnm," Newkirk says. Articulate, considering his mouth is smooshed against the table.

"This is my friend Alek, by the way."

"Uhnm."

"Alek, that's Newkirk," Dylan says, taking a big bite of something painfully crunchy. Crisps, maybe. It had better not be the bag of prawn cocktail crisps Newkirk bought two days ago; he hasn't had a single one yet.

Dylan goes on: "He works at Heathrow with Jaspert, and last night he got sloshed watching football with his daft mates."

Newkirk lifts his head slightly. "Arsenal won."

Dylan crunches. Loudly. "Brilliant."

"It was," Newkirk says, and tries to figure out if he can open the bottle without lifting his head any further. No. Sod it all.

"Pleased to meet you," the other boy – Alek, right – says. Very polite. Somehow expensive-sounding. It takes Newkirk a minute to notice the foreign accent.

He sits back in his chair, the better to fight with the aspirin bottle and see Alek, sitting on the floor. Alek and Dylan seem to have the same game open on their laptops. Newkirk would've sworn it was Jaspert's _sister_ who was interested in gaming... but he's also fairly certain the sound of someone else chewing shouldn't make him feel sick. Dylan can keep those crisps, he decides. "Where are you from, Alek?"

"Austria," Alek says. Newkirk doesn't quite remember where Austria is. Near Germany, right?

Bloody hell, why are these caps so tricky to open?

Around a mouthful of crisps, Dylan says, "He's at university. Cambridge."

"Oh," Newkirk says, distracted because he's just achieved victory over the aspirin bottle. "Good on you, then."

He tosses a couple of pills into his mouth, swallows down some of the water, and hopes for a near future where his skull doesn't throb.

"Thank you," Alek says. Even through the fuzz of a hangover Newkirk can tell the boy's sincere, posh voice or not. "It's an excellent school; I was lucky to be accepted."

"_Tu felix Austria_," Dylan says, as if it's a joke.

Alek cuts the other boy an unreadable glance, then looks at his laptop. His ears (they're rather large) have gone pink. "I suppose," he says.

Meanwhile, Newkirk's cotton brain has made a connection: "So what d'you think about - I mean, didn't Austria nearly go to war a few years ago? Against Croatia, was it?"

Alek stills. "Bosnia," he says after a long moment.

Newkirk has no idea where Bosnia is. That part of the continent changes too sodding much to keep track of anything. "Oh, right, right. Because of that politician, yeah? Had his car bombed by terrorists."

"It was an IED," Alek says. He takes a breath and looks at his laptop screen, voice going flatter as he continues: "No one was injured, but it damaged their armored car, so they were transferred to another car in the security detail for the return trip. The driver took a wrong turn. Another member of the cell happened to be on that street corner."

"Alek," Dylan says, soft.

"He shot them," Alek says to his keyboard. "Everyone in the car, though their bodyguard survived. He's the one who notified me, in fact."

Newkirk's missing something. He knows he is. He rubs at his forehead and tries to force his brain to work. "Notified you?"

Dylan makes an impatient noise. "It was his _parents_, ninny, not just some politician. His da and ma both. Now stop blethering on about it, aye?"

Newkirk looks at Dylan, who's twisted around on the sofa in order to scowl at him.

Then he looks at Alek, whose face is a perfect mask but whose hands are white-knuckled around the keyboard of his laptop. Christ, he might break it, that way.

Newkirk says, "Right. Er – sorry, mate," and quickly takes a drink of water so he won't say anything stupid.

Well. Aside from all that.

Having taken some aspirin and traumatized the orphaned son of a martyred politician, Newkirk decides it's likely time to retreat to bed again. But that's not to be.

Jaspert emerges from the bedroom, holding Newkirk's duvet in one hand and a bulging laundry bag in the other. "Alek! You drove, aye?"

Alek starts. "I - Yes," he says, in a passably normal voice.

Jaspert sets down the bag and puts out his hand. "Keys, then. There's too much here for our wee machine; I'll have to take it to the laundrette."

Alek exchanges a glance with Dylan, then sighs, sets aside his laptop, stands, and draws a set of keys from his pocket. "It's a silver Ford Fiesta," he says, placing the keys into Jaspert's outstretched hand. "I had to park some distance down the street."

Jaspert's eyebrow lifts. "A Ford Fiesta."

"Yes," Alek says, obviously daring Jaspert to say something.

Jaspert refrains, issuing orders instead. "Newkirk, mind the pair of them. And have _Dylan_ take his painkillers - I don't care how daft it bloody makes you feel," he adds, loudly, as Dylan begins to protest. "It's the first thing Ma'll have you do anyway."

Dylan subsides into disgruntled glaring. He shoves another handful of crisps into his mouth for good measure.

Why is food so _loud_?

"Have all that, Eugene?" Jaspert asks.

"Aye sir," Newkirk says, snapping off what has to be the worst salute in the history of Britain. It satisfies Jaspert, though, and he leaves the flat with enough dirty fabric to fill a laundrette twice over.

The door's scarcely shut before Dylan whoops with laughter. "A _Fiesta_! Blisters, Alek, I thought you were sodding rich!"

"I didn't want to seem ostentatious," Alek says, an unwilling grin tugging at his mouth.

Newkirk takes a drink of water in lieu of commenting. Using the word _ostentatious_ is pretty bloody ostentatious, if you ask him.

Dylan snorts and closes his laptop. "You'll look like a prince even if you take the Tube."

"Are you?" Newkirk asks Alek, sitting up straighter. That would be something. "A prince, that is."

"Aye, but don't tell anyone," Dylan says, grabbing his crutches and heaving himself to his feet. "He's in witness protection."

Newkirk looks from Dylan to Alek and back again. "Really?"

Both boys begin to laugh – Dylan first, in a devilish cackle, and then Alek, more reluctantly, never rising above a chuckle.

Still -

"That isn't fair!" Newkirk exclaims, making himself wince. "I've got a hangover!"

Deryn scoffs. "And I've got a bashed knee. Life's not sodding fair."

Newkirk opens his mouth to ask _What happened to your knee?_ but closes it just as fast. He's not falling into _that_ trap more than once this morning. All right, more than twice. Three times, tops.

He tries for nonchalance: "Going to take your painkillers?"

"Aye," Dylan says. Growls, really. He swings the crutches in an awkward half-hop towards the loo, injured leg stiff in its brace.

"I apologize for laughing," Alek says to Newkirk. Posh but sincere.

Before Newkirk can sort out how he feels about the boy apologizing to _him_, there's another loud scoff.

"Blisters, Alek, it was only a bit of fun. Besides, Newkirk'll believe any yackum you tell him," Dylan says over his shoulder. "He even thinks I'm a boy."

It takes a moment. Then Newkirk works through the words, and surprise has him sitting bolt upright, jaw slack. "Wait. You mean – you aren't?"

The only answer is more cackling laughter, cut off by a thump and a spate of full-blooded cursing that is not very feminine at all.

Barking spiders, as Jaspert would say. Though suddenly quite a lot of things make quite a lot more sense.

"I'm too bloody hung over for this," Newkirk says to himself, pushing a hand through his aching hair. He takes a drink of water and reconsiders. "Or not drunk enough."

Alek chuckles quietly. He looks in the direction Dylan's gone, the perfect mask slipping back into place. "Yes," he says quietly. "I know the feeling."


	115. homecoming, part 1

**Note:** Many people have asked for a "Deryn comes home" or an "Alek meets Ma Sharp" story. Well… okay! :D

.

.

.

_"Home is the place where, __when you have to go there, __they have to take you in."_

_- Robert Frost_

.

.

.

When Deryn turns up at Alek's door first thing in the morning, suitcase packed, airship ticket in her pocket, and nerves just beginning to twist, she's a bit startled to find Volger still sitting to breakfast.

He's dressed for the day, of course (looks as if he's been awake for hours, and he likely has) but there's no sense of hurry to his movements. In fact, he's more absorbed in the _Times_ than in the toast and sausages on the table, and if his coffee's not stone cold, it'll be a wonder.

"Good morning, your countship," she says.

"Good morning, _Mr_. Sharp," he says without looking up from the newspaper.

Alek's dishes have been cleared, she can see; they're propped up to dry by the kitchen sink. "Where's Alek?"

"Fetching his belongings." Volger turns a page and refolds the paper.

"D'you want that?" she asks, meaning the food.

He makes a noncommittal noise. Deryn reckons that's a go-ahead, so she takes a seat and helps herself. The toast is burnt, but the sausages aren't bad.

"Laying in provisions for your trip, I see," Volger says, dry.

She shrugs, determined not to let his needling ruin the prospect of an airship ride. "Aye, might as well."

There's a harrumph and a rustle of paper as he turns another page.

**_Your_**_ trip_, he'd said. Not _our trip_. Around a mouthful of sausage, Deryn asks, "You're not coming along?"

Volger coolly tells his newspaper, "Alek has no need of a fencing tutor on his vacation."

Deryn lifts an eyebrow. She doesn't believe that yackum for a moment; Volger meddles where he pleases, and he quite likes mucking up Deryn's plans. "What if German agents come after him?"

"I'm sure you will capably fend them off." Volger folds the newspaper and lays it on the table beside his empty breakfast plate. "Forgive me if I do not accompany you to the airship terminal," he says, standing.

Deryn watches the count leave the kitchen for the parlor. Barking spiders, was he actually telling the truth? He can't possibly mean to send the pair of them to Glasgow. For a full week. Alone.

Her nerves twist again. Not _exactly_ alone, though.

"_Mr_. Sharp!" a wee voice exclaims, and she turns her head to look just as Alek and Bovril come down the stairs, Alek carrying his valise.

"Aye, it's me, beastie," she says, grinning and rising herself. Bovril stretches out its tiny paws to her, and Deryn takes the beastie from Alek's shoulder. "Good morning, love," she adds.

"Good morning to you as well, _Liebe_," Alek says. He smirks at her. "I was beginning to feel slighted."

"_Dummkopf_," she says, but fondly. "D'you have everything?"

"Yes." His valise is leather, with gold-leaf initials stamped by the handle – not "AH", though. Deryn had taken him round to a pawnbroker's when they realized he'd need luggage. Her own suitcase is on loan from Mr. Barlow. "Shall we?"

They make their way to the front door, where Deryn picks up her suitcase. She looks back, expecting the count to emerge with a parting riposte.

Volger's nowhere to be seen.

Sodding strange, if you ask her. Even stranger that a man who steadfastly trailed Alek around the world in the midst of war wouldn't make a quick jaunt up to Glasgow.

Alek doesn't say a word about the matter. He locks the door behind them, returns the key to his pocket, and walks to the kerb as if nothing's amiss.

"What was that about, then?" she asks as they cross the street to wait for the omnibus. Alek had spent his first week in London fussing about the smell, the noise, and the inconvenience of being crowded together, but has since become inordinately fascinated with public transport.

Deryn suspects it has more to do with tight purse strings than anything else.

"Hmm?" he says, withdrawing his pocket watch (a gift from the Zoological Society) and checking the time against the posted schedule.

She rolls her eyes. "That business with Volger."

"Personal affairs," Bovril announces from her shoulder, its nose up and its tone haughty.

"Indeed," Alek says. He glances at the other folks waiting for the bus and says, too casually, "I requested that he stay here."

"Blisters, why?"

No one's paying them a squick of attention, but he switches over to German anyway: "I know you're hardly looking forward to this reunion. I assumed that not having Volger with us would make it easier."

It sounds likely enough. But Alek's asked – ordered, even – Volger to do all sorts of things, and the count has ignored most of them. Deryn's skeptical.

At the same time… they've no secrets between the two of them, and that's a vow Alek takes seriously. He's not lying. Volger probably decided that a week stuck in barbaric _Scotland_ was too ghastly to contemplate.

"It'll make things more fun, at least," Deryn says in English. She shifts the suitcase to her other hand and gives him a grin. "We'll have to sneak topside soon as we can."

"The view from there is always exceptional," Alek agrees. A small, private smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. " 'Meteoric', according to some."

Bovril giggles. "Meteoric!" it says, delighted with the joke.

The omnibus arrives with a great deal of tromping and snuffling from the elephantine drawing it. Deryn and Alek sit far enough to the back that they can safely hold hands.

_Aye, this'll be wonderful_, she thinks, watching Alek's profile as he studies the city going past their window. His hand in hers is a warm and familiar weight. Eight hours aloft with her prince, and no Volger in sight.

If only her ma and the aunties weren't waiting on the other end.


	116. homecoming, part 2

As it turns out, the captain and crew of the _Kelpie_ have no intention of letting passengers topside. This includes ex-midshipmen-turned-personal-assistants and honorary directors of the Zoological Society. Deryn has to content herself with a window-side table in the passengers' lounge.

It's not as brilliant as having the whole of the blue sky laid out around her, but – small consolation – there are stewards and a decent menu.

Alek laughs at her. "How many breakfasts do you need, Dylan?"

"Sod off," she says, flicking a bit of potato at him. He brushes it off his jacket and, beneath the table, gives her foot a kick that's more of a nudge.

Bovril, working industriously at its bowl of fruit, says, "Manners at the table, children," in exactly the same tones as wee Joan and Thomas Barlow's nanny.

"Aye, miss. Sorry, miss," Deryn says to the loris. She nudges Alek's foot back.

Bovril harrumphs and returns to its meal.

Deryn drinks her tea and looks around. The _Kelpie_ is a decent size, for a civilian airbeast, though of course much smaller and slower than the _Leviathan_. It runs a regular service from Glasgow to Manchester to London and back again. The gondola has cabins for passengers on night flights and should they require special accommodations during the day. Otherwise, it's not more than a floating train car, albeit a sodding expensive one.

Dr. Barlow had paid for their tickets with a curt, "_Nonsense_," when Deryn and Alek had objected to the cost, adding, "_If you dislike receiving it as a gift, consider it compensation for your services during the war_." Mr. Barlow had added something about Christian charity and the importance of family, and that had been that.

"The 'family dinner' tonight," Alek says, sipping his coffee. "Who's to be there, precisely?"

Deryn takes Ma's letters from her jacket pocket and unfolds them, smoothing the paper flat on the table linen. Ma's kept up correspondence ever since Deryn established a fixed address in London (the Barlow house; she only lived there a week or two, but still gets on well with the housekeeper). She picks out the one about dinner and passes it to Alek, then resumes eating. "Just the aunties and most of the cousins, I reckon."

His eyes flick over the lines, back and forth. A small crease finds the center of his brow.

"What?" Deryn asks around a mouthful of potato.

He hands the letter back. "It won't be a problem for your mother, I hope, that Volger has stayed behind."

Deryn snorts.

Alek gives her an unamused look. "In regards to the seating arrangements."

She snorts again. Alek shed his titles with the simple pitch of a scroll into the sea, but princely manners are harder to lose, it seems. "We don't fuss about with place cards and the like, _Dummkopf_. If the chair's empty, it's yours."

"Ah," he says. He smirks. "A mad scramble of barbarians."

"Uncivilized scoundrels!" Bovril contributes – a bit too gleefully, if you ask Deryn.

This time, the nudge to Alek's foot is more of a kick. His smirk only widens. "Aye, we're all filthy heathens," she says, making a face at him. "But a week in our house, and you'll be just as bad."

His smirk disappears, replaced by a frown and a slightly panicked, "I can't impose on your mother. The hotel will be fine."

A hotel had been the plan when Volger was coming along. Now, though…

"Don't be daft," she says. "Ma won't have you in a hotel. Jaspert's room is empty – that's fine enough."

He hesitates. Smoothes his tie unnecessarily. "I wouldn't want to –"

She nudges his foot again. "You won't. And don't be nervous, either."

"Hmph," he says. A smile quirks his mouth, but anxiety and an old pain flicker in his eyes. "I'm meeting your family. I have every reason to be terrified."

He does; that's no lie. Ma and the aunties will keep a weather eye on him the entire time he's in Glasgow. And Deryn will never find herself in the same position, because Alek has no family left.

(He'd told her once: "I wish that you could have met my parents."

"I don't reckon they'dve been pleased, you bringing home a common girl who spends her days in trousers," she had replied, stroking her thumb over his knuckles.

"Perhaps," he'd said. "Almost certainly, to be honest. But you would have charmed them."

"Aye, I'm pure dead charming," she'd said, and kissed him so she wouldn't have to say_ And I wish you could have met Da_.)

Deryn grins now and leans forward, lowering her voice. "Ninny. You're a boy and you think I'm brilliant. How often d'you suppose _that's_ happened?"

"Never, I should hope," he says, arrogant as an emperor – but the press of his boot against hers tells an entirely different story.

She's certain her grin has gone daft and mooning. Not the best idea when she's Dylan, so she ducks her head until she can school her expression.

She looks up again to see Bovril sit back on its haunches, a half-eaten piece of melon in its paws. It turns its large, wise eyes from Alek to Deryn. "Family dinner tonight. Strawberries and cream?"

"God's wounds," Alek says. He gestures at Deryn with his coffee cup. "This is your influence."

She flicks another piece of potato at him; he chuckles. "Aye, beastie," she tells Bovril. "As much as you like."

Bovril makes a pleased sort of rumbling noise.

Alek finishes his coffee while Deryn and Bovril do the same to their breakfasts. Bovril curls up on Alek's shoulder for a nap while Deryn and Alek talk about Zoo goings-on and things that don't matter, and it would be dull except that they never have a chance to simply sit and chat.

She loves her life – the mad swirl of it – but it's nice to have a quiet, still moment, just the two of them, clouds drifting below their feet.

Eventually, Deryn wheedles a pen and paper from a steward and does some sketching (of the other passengers, mainly, as the view out the windows is all countryside), while Alek produces a cheap paperback novel and begins to read.

Bovril curls on his shoulders and naps.

After a few hours, the _Kelpie_ lands in Manchester, to drop off passengers and take on new ones. Deryn leans against the fabricated balsa framing the window, arms crossed over her chest, and watches the some of the airmen talking and laughing with the ground crew.

She sighs. Blisters, she misses that.

Alek, standing beside her, lays a sympathetic hand on her shoulder before returning to their table.

Then again, right here is rather brilliant, too.

She gives the airmen a last glance, then pushes off the window and takes her seat again, stretching her legs out beneath the table and crossing them at the ankle.

"They'll be serving lunch soon," Alek says, picking up his novel.

She knocks her crossed feet into his leg, hard enough to hurt.

He grins into the pages of his book.

Deryn fetches her paper and pen, the better to sketch him. He looks like a prince: crisp white shirt, tidy jacket and tie, hair combed neatly back – excepting that one wayward curl – and trousers pressed into sharp creases. She spends a while on his hands; she likes them. All knuckles and square, blunt fingertips. Boy's hands, and no mistake.

Her own hands are miles away from being ladylike, but there are some things binding and clever tailoring can never mimic.

New passengers flock into the lounge. Some of them crowd the windows, waving to people on the ground or just pointing out sights as the _Kelpie_ takes off again.

"Halfway there," Deryn says, mainly to herself. Her nerves begin twisting, thinking of what's waiting for them at the other end.

Alek makes a _hmm_ noise.

Which reminds her. "D'you remember everyone? My family, I mean."

It's been weeks since she went over her family tree for Alek, and he'd been translating papers for Dr. Barlow at the time. She doesn't want him caught flat-footed at dinner tonight – there are a lot of sodding cousins to keep straight.

Alek says "Mmm," without looking up from his book. Shades of sodding Volger and his newspaper this morning.

She lifts an eyebrow and nudges his leg. "All right, then, let's have it."

He closes the book and lays it aside, then settles back in his chair, fingers laced across his stomach as if he's a boffin preparing to lecture. "On your father's side, you have one aunt, Jocasta, and two cousins – Calliope and Ulysses, who is away at school. Calliope is all right, but a bit bookish. Jocasta's husband is Edward, a civil servant. Your mother has two sisters, Mary and Margaret, and a brother, Robert. Robert is a widower, and a barrister. Mary's husband James is a barrister as well, while Margaret's husband, William, is in shipping. Your maternal cousins are Alice, Elizabeth, Jacob, Ian, and Barnabas. Alice is engaged; Elizabeth is married. Barnabas is just old enough to walk, Ian wears spectacles, and Jacob is 'a sodding liar' and not to be trusted."

Barking spiders.

"Aye," she says, sitting up straighter, clearing her throat, "but what's Elsie's husband's name?"

"You couldn't recall," he says, smirking again.

"He's pure dead boring." It's true; the man has all the personality of a porridge. About as handsome as one, too, come to think of it. That's fine for Elsie, since she's a bit of a porridge herself. Deryn squints at Alek. "How did you remember all that?"

He shrugs. "A prince ought to remember details of important families. Or so my tutors insisted. I confess I paid rather more attention to yours than to any put forward by them."

She glances about; no one listening. "My family's important?"

His green eyes hold hers. Something warm and bright unfolds in her chest and shivers through her gut. "Indisputably," he says, soft and very, very serious.

Sod it all. She pushes back her chair and stands. "Come on, then, Mr. Hohenberg."

Surprised, he follows her lead. "And where are we going, Mr. Sharp?"

"To find a door that locks, ninny," she says, tugging her jacket straight.

"Ah," he says. His ears redden, and he coughs into his fist. "In that case, perhaps Bovril should stay here."

The loris doesn't seem to mind being left on the table with Alek's book and Deryn's sketches.

"_Personal affairs_," it says to their backs, cackling. "Meteoric!"


	117. homecoming, part 3

**Note:** Obviously, the aunties and cousins are my invention... especially _this_ cousin. To be fair, I had other plans for Elsie, but then Deryn insisted that her husband was a porridge.

.

.

.

"Oh, bollocks."

With that, Deryn comes to a halt in the middle of the airship terminal, heedless of the people around her. Alek narrowly avoids stepping on her heels.

"What is it?" he asks, concerned. They have their luggage; Bovril is perched on his shoulder; and the new bruise on her neck (that he hadn't, quite, meant to put there) is safely hidden beneath her shirt collar. There's nothing amiss that he can see. "Did you leave your sketches in the gondola?"

"Worse." She grimaces. "It's _Elsie_."

Ah. Cousin Elizabeth, married to the dull man whose name Deryn can't be bothered to remember. Alek peers around the terminal, wondering if he can find the woman without knowing what she looks like.

The terminal is larger and more busy than Alek had expected. For that matter, Glasgow itself exceeds his expectations: its roads and buildings spreading out for miles in a ragged spider's web, its river crowded with ships and beasts of all sorts.

He'd heard that it was a busy, prosperous city – a London of the north. But since the majority of his information came from Deryn, who tends to _improve, _as it were, upon details in her storytelling, he hadn't given it as much credit as he might.

He has to admit, now, that she was perfectly honest about her home. Presumably her depiction of her cousin is likewise correct.

"Is that her…?" he asks, nodding in the direction of a rather stout young couple, both gazing about with bland expressions.

"Aye, and her porridge husband. Sod it all," Deryn says. She squares her shoulders and starts forward again. "Come on, then."

Alek follows in her wake, pretending that his palms have not begun to sweat. God's wounds. He met the Kaiser once – Wilhelm came to admire his father's rose garden at Konopischt, a scarce two months before the war began – and had managed that without making a fool of himself.

This is only a cousin. A daft one, he reminds himself. He refuses to be nervous.

"Personal affairs," Bovril murmurs into his ear.

Blast.

"Traitor," he tells the loris. It giggles.

"Oi, Elsie!" Deryn calls out as they draw closer.

Elsie startles, offers an uncertain smile in Deryn's direction, then clutches her husband's arm and says something to him when he bends down. He looks up at Deryn and then Alek, apparently confused.

Alek steels himself.

"Hello, er, Dylan," Elsie says, pasting on a wide smile. She's a few years older than Deryn, a full head shorter, and several kilograms heavier. Her blonde hair is carefully pinned up beneath a hat that doesn't suit her, and the cut of her dress is on the conservative side of stylish.

Alek is immediately reminded of the society matrons of Vienna, forever clucking disapprovingly. Usually at his mother, who married so scandalously far above her station.

"Elsie," Deryn says, giving her cousin a brief hug that neither of them seem to enjoy. She eyes Elsie's husband, who still looks confused, but says nothing to him. "Where's Ma?"

"Auntie Janet's busy with dinner," Elsie says, lifting her round chin, full of self-importance. "She sent me on instead. Oh, goodness, your _hair_. I hadn't seen it. What a fright!"

So. _Exactly_ like the society matrons.

Alek decides that he dislikes cousin Elizabeth.

Deryn steps back and nudges Alek forward. "This is Alek."

He sets the valise by his feet and puts his hand out politely. Politeness can be an insult; Volger has sliced lesser men to ribbons in such a fashion. However, he doubts Elsie is sophisticated enough to realize it. "It's a pleasure to meet you, ma'am."

Elsie's hand is soft and limp beneath her glove, and her attitude is all flustered bewilderment. She is, he understands, twice as intimidated to meet him as he ever was to meet her. "Oh, aye, Your H – Mr. – what am I to call you?"

"Alek is fine," he says. "And the blame for Dylan's hair must lie with me, I'm afraid – I convinced him that I could do as well as a professional barber."

Elsie opens her mouth, then closes it again. "Well – ah –"

Pleased to have knocked her off-balance, Alek turns to the husband. "Sir."

Elsie's husband comes to life. "George Murray," he says, shaking Alek's hand. His hand is equally soft and plump; his suit is well-tailored, though it doesn't hide his generous stomach. Porridge indeed. "Good to meet you, lad."

The "lad" is rather presumptuous, given that George can't be more than eighteen or twenty. His moustache is more of a plan than a reality.

"Likewise," Alek says. George nods vaguely.

"Well," Elsie says, reclaiming the conversation, "we've a taxi waiting. Shall we?"

She takes her husband's arm again, clutching it proudly, and nearly drags the man towards the street exit.

Alek and Deryn retrieve their luggage and exchange a glance. Alek lifts an eyebrow; Deryn rolls her eyes; and they both look away, trying not to laugh.

Outside, the taxi driver touches the brim of his hat and holds the door open for Elsie, who clearly thinks she's sweeping inside like a mannered lady. Elsie, however, is no Dr. Barlow.

"Come on, George," she orders from inside the taxi. George obediently climbs in after her, leaving Deryn and Alek to handle their luggage on their own.

Or rather, Deryn and the driver. She hoists herself atop the taxi and helps the man secure the two suitcases, talking and laughing all the while. Alek ought to get into the taxi, but instead he stays where he is and watches Deryn with a small smile.

He frequently wishes that he had her easy, confident way with strangers. Today, he's rather desperate for it. He's already given up on impressing Elsie and George, who hardly deserve it, but as for Mrs. Sharp…

Deryn hops to the ground with only the slightest twinge for her knee, brushing off her hands, eyes bright. "Ready?" she asks him.

"How far is your mother's house?" he asks by way of answering. The street is busy in either direction. He supposes it's the hour for it; businesses will be closing soon. The fabricated animal hitched to the taxi makes a bleating noise, and the driver rubs the beast's neck before mounting the box.

She makes a face. "Too bloody far."

"Porridge," Bovril declares. "Sodding inconvenient."

"Aye, beastie." Deryn plucks Bovril from Alek's shoulder and settles the loris onto hers. "We could ride with the driver…"

"Bear up, Mr. Sharp," Alek says, mock-stern. He puts a hand on her shoulder and propels her towards the taxi, which earns him a snorted laugh.

Elsie and George have settled onto the padded, upholstered bench that faces the rear of the taxi. Elsie is fretting about her hat, and George is gazing at nothing in particular. Deryn and Alek take seats across from them, Deryn raps on the ceiling to alert the driver, and they're off.

"So," Elsie says, preening. "I reckon Auntie Janet passed along the _happy news_?"

"Aye," Deryn says. She reaches up to give Bovril a scratch behind the ears, making the loris purr. "Congratulations to the both of you."

Alek needs another moment to understand what they're discussing, but when he does, he feels himself flush. He sneaks a glimpse of George, who now has his head tipped back and his eyes closed. God's wounds, is the man _asleep_? "Pure dead boring" may have been an understatement.

He clears his throat. "Yes, congratulations."

Deryn smirks and elbows his side. "Clanker. After all these months working at the Zoo…"

"George is in accounting," Elsie announces, loud and bright. "He's _so_ clever with money."

George's mouth is hanging slack.

Elsie continues, falsely sweet: "And you work at a zoo, Alek?"

Alek elbows Deryn back and says, "I've been thinking of going into politics."

Elsie clucks approvingly. "Oh, wouldn't that be grand! We haven't any politicians in the family, yet. Speaking of, Deryn – where's your ring?"

"My what?"

"Your _ring_, dear." Elsie holds up her left hand and waggles her fingers importantly, so that the light catches her gold wedding band. Her voice turns sly: "No need to hide now that we're all to ourselves."

Deryn colors slightly and darts a glance at Alek, who is determinedly keeping his face blank. She turns her attention to Elsie again. "I don't _have_ a ring, ninny. We're not married."

Elsie leans back, her mouth falling open in a perfect O of surprise. "Not – but – you traveled alone -!"

Deryn snorts, unimpressed. "I went unchaperoned on the _Leviathan_, too, you know."

Elsie hasn't recovered, and that information fails to help. Her pale skin turns an unattractive, blotchy pink. "But – it's been months since! I thought – well – it seemed from your letters – You really ought to be married," she finishes with a haughty sniff. "It's only proper, and you're not getting any younger, aye?"

"Barking _spiders_! Not all of us want a sodding ring on our finger and a baby in our belly by the time we're eighteen!" Deryn exclaims, glaring at her cousin, fists clenching in what Alek hopes is an unconscious gesture and not the prelude to a fight. He doesn't think he can prevent a few of her punches from connecting.

Then again, he's not certain that he doesn't want a few of Deryn's punches to connect.

He puts a hand on her arm regardless.

Elsie's blotchy pink becomes a blotchy red. Her eyes snap to Alek. "And you haven't anything to say?" she says, in high dudgeon now.

"I wasn't aware that I was invited to this discussion," he says, striving to keep his voice level and cool.

"Well!" Elsie says in a huff. She sits up as straight as is possible in a taxi, looking pointedly away from her cousin.

Deryn crosses her arms and scowls at the city passing by the window.

George begins to drool.

Alek sighs inwardly and folds his hands in his lap, doing his best not to think about what Deryn just said, despite the panicked feeling in his stomach.

_Not all of us want a sodding ring on our finger._

Perhaps she didn't mean it. He'll have to ask her – but no, God's wounds, that won't do. Not to mention that this disastrous first impression on her family might scuttle his plans before they're even properly launched.

_At least_, he thinks, _Volger isn't here to mock me._

It's a small consolation.


	118. fun with foreign languages

**I. Malay**

.

.

.

"You've been drinking," Alek observes; Deryn smells like cheap rum and cheaper cigars, and there's nothing subtle about the way she's walked into his cabin and dropped into his lap.

She presses her lips to his jaw, his neck, his shoulder. Says something he doesn't understand.

"What was that?"

"Malay," she says, unbuttoning his shirt.

He grins. "Drunk and speaking Malay. What am I to do with you?"

She pulls back, eyes dark, smile wicked. "I haven't learned how to say that bit."

He hooks his fingers into the waistband of her trousers. "I'm certain we can manage."

They do.

.

.

.

**II. Latin**

.

.

.

Deryn squints at the page. Holds it out at arm's length.

Her verdict: "Blether."

Alek _hmphs_. Grabs the page from her. "It's perfectly good Latin."

"Aye, if you say so."

"You should learn to read it," he says, writing, "if only for Catullus."

Her eyebrow lifts.

"He was a poet. Quite scandalous, really – I wasn't supposed to read him. Try this."

" _'Da mi… bas- basia mille'_," she reads, saying it like the English _mile_. "No, that's daft. _'Da mi basia_…"

" '_Da mi basia mille, deinde centum_.' "

"All right," she says, cheerful, and the Latin lesson is over.

.

.

.

**III. French**

.

.

.

"I know some French," Dylan says, a trifle defensive, when Alek asks how many languages he speaks.

"Such as?"

The list begins with _bonjour_ and _adieu_ and ends with _batard_ and _merde_. In between, there's more of the latter than the former. Dylan's accent is excellent.

Alek tries not to blush. "You certainly know how to _curse_ in French."

Dylan shrugs. "I was only in Paris a few days." Adds, slyly: "Your tutor left those bits out, I reckon."

"Indeed."

"D'you want me to teach you the really brilliant ones?"

_Monsieur_ Girard would likely suffer an apoplexy, but Alek agrees.

.

.

.

**IV. German**

.

.

.

"_Eins_," Deryn says, squeezing Sophie's wee toe. Her daughter giggles. Deryn grins and grabs the next one. "_Zwei, drei, vier… fünf_!"

Sophie giggles harder. Her eyes scrunch up behind her round rosy cheeks. Her feet curl, squirming away from Deryn's fingers. "No, Mama, _nein_!"

"_Nicht mehr_?" Someday they'll get to _zehn_. Maybe.

Sophie shakes her head, dark curls bouncing, eyes gleaming. "_Küsse_!"

Deryn glances up: Alek's in the doorway, watching them both, a perfectly daft smile on his face.

"Aye then, kisses," Deryn says. She leans over and blows a raspberry into her wee lass's belly. Sophie shrieks with laughter.

.

.

.

**V. Russian**

.

.

.

Deryn pages through the book of phrases, trying to find the one that'll get them to Perm. "Blisters, how d'you say 'train ticket'?"

Alek grimaces. "I know how to greet the czar…"

Deryn scowls at him, then at the befuddled ticket agent, then points at the waiting train. "_Ticket_," she says slowly.

The agent scratches at his head.

On her shoulder, Bovril suddenly begins chattering away in perfect Russian.

"Ah!" Beaming, the agent hands over two tickets. Alek pays.

They might make this secret Zoological Society meeting after all. Deryn grins at the loris. "_Bozhe moy_, beastie."

Bovril preens. "_Spasibo_."

.

.

.

**VI. Spanish**

.

.

.

Deryn peers over his shoulder as Alek struggles through another line. "Any easier?"

"The language, yes," he says, marking his place in _Los de abajo_. "Not the story. His look at the war is… unflinching."

Though engrossing, in its way. Dr. Azuela is a natural storyteller.

"I had a close enough look at that war, myself," she says.

He smirks. "You saw a camera walker and a rock."

"No – the rock was a barking surprise." She runs her fingers through his hair. Yawns hugely. "Come to bed before midnight, love."

"Mm-hm," he says, already falling into the novel once again.

.

.

.

**VII. Mandarin**

.

.

.

"Do you _ever_ know what you're ordering?" Alek asks, amused.

Deryn shrugs. "Pointing at things has worked brilliantly so far." Their tea's delicious, for instance – hot and fragrant, with a bit of spice to it.

"Mm. If you don't mind, I should like to order today."

She glances down; the menu's printed in Chinese. Hazard of finding your lunch in Chinatown, she expects. "Aye, all right."

The waiter returns. Alek says, carefully, "_Wǒmen xīwàng dàn huā tāng_."

Blisters. "How long did you practice that?" she asks, after they get their soup.

"Days," he confesses; when she laughs, he joins in.

.

.

.

**VIII. English**

.

.

.

"Mr. Willoughby says that you are not applying yourself to your lessons." Father looks up from the papers on his desk. "Is this true?"

Alek keeps his chin firm. "Yes, sir."

Father frowns.

Alek breaks. "Why do I need to learn _English_, Father? I'll never use it!"

The frown deepens, and then – unexpectedly – Father chuckles. "One never knows what Providence has in store, Aleksandar."

Or: _take all of your lessons seriously, even the useless ones_.

Alek sighs. "Yes, sir."

"Excellent." Father waves him away. "You're late for fencing with Count Volger."

Alek sighs again, and goes to face his destiny.

.

.

.

**Notes:** Catullus 5 is probably his most famous poem. _Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred_…

_Los de abajo_ (literally "the ones below", its English title is _The Underdogs_) is one of Dr. Mariano Azuela's best-known novels. It draws heavily on his real-life experiences with Pancho Villa's forces.

And why Malay? Well, why not? :)

This whole thing started because I read a fabulous book, _What Language Is (And What It Isn't and What It Could Be)_, by John McWhorter. He has also a very good one about English – _Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue_, which wins for the title alone.


End file.
